Sgt. Steve Addison said the 911 calls started coming in around 10:30 a.m. PT Thursday by staff and a social worker who feared the woman. The woman’s child is also a patient in the hospital. They said a bean bag gun was used to shoot the woman, who is in her 30s. She was later taken into custody. Addison initially told police the woman had a knife, but when officers arrived she was holding a different weapon and was uncooperative. “I can tell you it was a dangerous weapon, an edged weapon,” Addison said. “We haven’t said what that weapon is. We’re deliberately withholding it for evidentiary reasons, for the integrity of the investigation.” The incident unfolded after some conversations at the hospital about possibly limiting access to the woman’s child and involving the Department of Children, Addison said. The VPD took the unusual step posting a long thread on twitter for the police response. But a women’s advocate criticized the VPD’s actions as inflaming what is clearly a difficult situation for women. “Vancouver police have kind of backed down, even if it was a knife,” said Angela Marie MacDougall, executive director of Battered Women’s Support Services. “Their initial response was unhelpful and greatly reinforced the stigma.”
“She wanted her baby”
“[The police] it made it seem like there was this random woman who was violent and was violent with everyone in the venue, when we see clearly that this was a mother who had been given bad news about her child being taken away and wanted her baby,” MacDougall said . . Addison said the woman could face charges including possession of a knife, assault and breach of probation. She was taken to the hospital for a minor injury to her lower body, he said. “Using the beanbag shotgun in this case was exactly what it was designed for… and it helped us resolve a very tense and volatile and dangerous situation safely without injury to the public, staff, babies or her” , Addison said. Sgt. John Roberts of the Vancouver Police Department shows the contents of a bean bag. Police used a handgun to shoot a woman who was holding a gun at BC Women’s Hospital Thursday morning. (Belle Puri/CBC) Vancouver police have faced scrutiny recently after a man was shot dead in the Downtown Eastside. Police have defended the use of beanbag guns as a “less lethal” way to subdue a suspect. Addison said the VPD’s response to Women’s Hospital was justified because of the severity of the situation, which he compared to school shootings across the U.S. such as Uvalde and Sandy Hook. “We would not wait until someone is killed or someone is seriously injured before we act,” he said. “A person with a knife or a gun or a deadly weapon within an institutional setting and endangering vulnerable people, in a situation like this, we are trained to move immediately to deal with the threat.” VPD Sgt. John Rogers said the impact of a beanbag gun is similar to the average police officer hitting someone as hard as he can with a baton. “The luxury of a beanbag shotgun is that you can do it from a distance. And the advantage of distance is that it gives officers an opportunity to plan, act and evaluate,” he said. In a statement, the Provincial Health Services Authority said it wanted to reassure the public that the issue had been contained. “Our campus continues to be safe and secure for patients, their families, staff and visitors,” the statement said. “No one was seriously injured.”
