Inquest into Tecumseh man’s death turns out six recommendations

The jury that spent the better part of this week pouring through the circumstances around a fatal 2019 police shooting has come up with six recommendations aimed at preventing future such incidents.

The recommendations, which have been sent to the Ontario Ministry of the Solicitor General, are the result of a coroner’s inquest into the death of Derek Teskey.

Teskey was 48-years old when, on June 14, 2019, OPP officers were called to a home in Tecumseh where he had barricaded himself in a bathroom with a knife, threatening to harm himself.

The inquest heard Teskey had stopped communicating with officers, who then confronted him. A fight broke out with Teskey armed with a knife and scissors.

He was shot once in the chest.

The inquest began Monday and wrapped Thursday.

These are the recommendations made by the jury:

• Analyze the feasibility of providing frontline OPP officers with additional non-lethal use of force options, including shields, that can be used when responding to calls involving individuals who are experiencing mental health or drug induced crises.
• Develop a strategy to increase the complement of frontline OPP officers who receive crisis negotiation training with the eventual goal to have all frontline officers trained.
• Develop strategies to increase the availability and response time of OPP crisis negotiators with the goal to have at least one trained person on shift at any given time within each detachment.
• Integrate a scenario into Basic Constable Training at the Ontario Police College and annual Ontario Provincial Police block training that draws from the circumstances of this inquest.
• Analyze the feasibility of providing frontline Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officers with surveillance equipment for the purpose of discreetly gathering more information of a sealed off environment.
• Develop a formal method for internal communication for critical incidents and lessons learned from debriefings, to be disseminated throughout the OPP organization.

When reached for comment by CTV News Friday, a spokesperson from the Ministry of the Solicitor General thanked the jury for their work.

“The ministry will carefully review the inquest recommendations and respond to the Office of the Chief Coroner directly,” spokesperson Brent Ross wrote in an email.