The 38-year-old homeless man who was shot and killed by Montreal police last Friday has been identified as Jimmy Cloutier, according to the Quebec Coroner’s Office.
Cloutier was known to the staff at Old Brewery Mission — where he sought meals, clothes, showers and a warm place to sleep. He also frequented Saint Michael’s Mission downtown.
A police source says Cloutier stabbed another man a few blocks north of the Old Brewery Mission before officers confronted him Friday. It was just outside of the Clark St. shelter where police say Cloutier made threatening gestures with the knife, prompting them to open fire.
But one homeless advocate questions whether lethal force was necessary in Cloutier’s case. Matthew Pearce says that there have been four fatal police shootings of homeless men in the city’s recent history.
“Four incidents of confrontation with the police, and four deaths. Not injuries – deaths,” said Matthew Pearce of the Old Mission Brewery, in an interview with CTV Montreal. “I have to feel that in each of those there were other options that could have been pursued.”
Pearce, the mission’s executive director, said he has offered to work with the chief of police in hopes of preventing deadly conflicts in the future.
One street worker familiar with Cloutier told the Montreal Gazette he struggled with mental health problems. The worker described the 38-year-old as a nice man caught in a bad situation.
For their part, Montreal police have been trying to improve the way they respond to people in the throes of a mental health crisis.
Since 2013, the police department has trained hundreds of officers in “critical incident response” — an approach centred on counselling a person in a crisis rather than confronting them. Officers with the incident training often patrol the streets with social workers from a downtown clinic.
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