An Ottawa family’s interaction with police after a 911 call that mistakenly brought officers to their home is once again raising questions about officers’ involvement in wellness checks and the way they enter private homes.
Around 5:45 a.m. ET on Wednesday morning, city police responded to a call about a potentially suicidal man.
The call was about a man “threatening self-harm,” but the female caller gave the wrong address, say police.
They narrowed down the call’s location to within 25 metres and entered a home on Montgomery Street in the city’s Vanier neighbourhood, but it was the wrong house.
In their search for the distressed man, Nadia Ngoto said police walked into her home without permission.
“I didn’t hear them announce themselves,” said Ngoto, 38. “I have four children and one roommate, and not one person heard police announce themselves.”
Family ‘terrified’
She said police first walked to the back of the house, and knocked on her 11-year-old son Armaan’s bedroom window with their flashlights and startled him awake.
Armaan Ngoto, 11, says he didn’t really know what was going on when officers entered the family’s Ottawa home early Wednesday morning. (Jean Delisle/CBC)
“I was scared because I don’t have the best experience with officers and I didn’t really know what was going on and everybody in my house was asleep, so I was pretty terrified,” said Armaan, who said he saw three officers by his window.
He said he wanted to leave the room to get his older brother, but was told not to move. The officer asked about the address of the home and its layout, Armaan said, but he couldn’t remember the address because the family had just moved in two months earlier.
CBC News asked Ottawa police if waking up the child was considered “announcing their presence.”
“Front-line officers attended this home and spoke to a young resident through a window,” the Ottawa Police Service said in an email. “Simultaneously, other frontline officers entered through the unlocked front door, announcing themselves before and during their entry.”
WATCH | Police under scrutiny for no-knock raids:
Police forces across Canada are conducting hundreds of no-knock raids each year to execute search warrants. 2:01
Around the same time Armaan was being questioned, Ngoto’s oldest son, Ozzy, was awakened by heavy footsteps walking across wooden floors. He could see the flashlights shining through the cracks of his bedroom door.
“I proceeded with caution and opened my door,” said Ozzy. “I saw this tall figure … and he turns around, and he has this huge-ass gun in his hand and starts asking me all these types of questions about someone named Carlos who I didn’t know.”
He said a flashlight was shone in his face and he could see what looked like a long gun at the officer’s hip level.
“You don’t expect to see armed men in your home. I assumed it was an accidental call [that] someone tipped them off about a drug charge and they got the wrong address.”
Ozzy Ngoto, another sibling in the home, encountered police responding to the mistaken 911 call. (Jean Delise/CBC)
Ozzy says he was even more disturbed when officers told him they were there for a suicide wellness check.
“That threw me off even more. That doesn’t seem to de-escalate things,” said Ozzy. He estimates there were at least 10 officers in his home.
Ozzy says police said “sorry” as they exited after realizing they had the wrong house, but before they left officers did a “sweep” of the house and barged into the upstairs bedroom of a 70 year-old family friend. Ozzy estimates they were in the home for about 15 minutes.
Questioning police wellness checks
A CBC analysis of deadly police encounters show that the majority of the victims suffer from mental illness or substance abuse. Black and Indigenous people are also disproportionately killed in police encounters.
They told my son “Don’t move” … Would he have gotten shot for not listening to instructions?– Nadia Ngoto, mother
Kevin Walby, a criminologist at the University of Winnipeg, said past fatalities show why police should not be engaged in mental health calls. He said resources should instead be put into solutions that turn health workers and community advocates into first responders to these types of calls.
“If we reimagine the way we respond to distress, re-imagine the way we respond to transgression so that so we’re not defaulting to policing all the time, but instead empower these community groups that have so much passion to keep people safe — then I think we would be in a situation where people don’t have to worry about getting killed by police,” he said.
Nadia Ngoto says her trust in police has been further damaged after officers entered her home without permission. (Jean Delisle/CBC)
Walby finds it particularly galling that the incident at the Ngoto family home occurred just two days after Ottawa police Chief Peter Sloly announced a temporary ban on “dynamic entries” involving searches for disposable evidence, such as drugs. The force has come under fire for several cases of misconduct related to no-knock raids revealed by the The Fifth Estate.
He wonders if there is a disconnect between the police executive and the rank and file.
Walby said judges have ruled that a police announcement of entry has to be “loud and clear … and have some duration. And it doesn’t seem like any of that was there [in this case].”
Despite Ozzy Ngoto’s account of seeing officers with long guns, Ottawa police say this was a wellness check and not a dynamic entry. The force says its tactical officers did not enter the home, although they were called in later to support the search for the potentially suicidal man.
Police didn’t find the distressed man that night, but Nadia Ngoto said her family has been retraumatized.
For several years, the Congolese-Canadian lived in shelters with her children after fleeing domestic violence. Ngoto and her four sons have had negative experiences with police involving racial profiling, she said.
“If any of us made the wrong move, we would have been the ones in trouble or dead.
“They told my 11-year-old son, ‘Don’t move, don’t move.’ So what if he turned his back and left his room? Would he have gotten shot for not listening to police instructions? Those are questions I don’t want to know. It’s a nightmare.”
For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.
CALGARY – The Calgary Flames have re-signed defenceman Ilya Solovyov and centre Cole Schwindt, the NHL club announced Wednesday.
Solovyov signed a two-year deal which is a two-way contract in year one and a one-way deal in year two and carries an average annual value of US$775,000 at the NHL level.
Schwindt signed a one-year, two-way contract with an average annual value of $800,000 at the NHL level.
The 24-year-old Solovyov, from Mogilev, Belarus, made his NHL debut last season and had three assists in 10 games for the Flames. He also had five goals and 10 assists in 51 games with the American Hockey League’s Calgary Wranglers and added one goal in six Calder Cup playoff games.
Schwindt, from Kitchener, Ont., made his Flames debut last season and appeared in four games with the club.
The 23-year-old also had 14 goals and 22 assists in 66 regular-season games with the Wranglers and added a team-leading four goals, including one game-winning goal, in the playoffs.
Schwindt was selected by Florida in the third round, 81st overall, at the 2019 NHL draft. He came to Calgary in July 2022 along with forward Jonathan Huberdeau and defenceman MacKenzie Weegar in the trade that sent star forward Matthew Tkachuk to the Panthers.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
KING CITY, Ont. – Oman scored 10 runs in the final over to edge Nepal by one wicket with just one ball remaining in ICC Cricket World Cup League 2 play Wednesday.
Kaleemullah, the No. 11 batsman who goes by one name, hit a four with the penultimate ball as Oman finished at 223 for nine. Nepal had scored 220 for nine in its 50 overs.
Kaleemullah and No. 9 batsman Shakeel Ahmed each scored five in the final over off Sompal Kami. They finished with six and 17 runs, respectively.
Opener Latinder Singh led Oman with 41 runs.
Nepal’s Gulsan Jha was named man of the match after scoring 53 runs and recording a career-best five-wicket haul. The 18-year-old slammed five sixes and three-fours in his 35-ball knock, scoring 23 runs in the 46th over alone when he hit six, six, four, two, four and one off Aqib Ilyas.
Captain Rohit Paudel led Nepal with 60 runs.
The 19th-ranked Canadians, who opened the triangular series Monday with a 103-run win over No. 17 Nepal, face No. 16 Oman on Friday, Nepal on Sunday and Oman again on Sept. 26. All the games are at the Maple Leaf Cricket Ground.
The eight World League 2 teams each play 36 one-day internationals spread across nine triangular series through December 2026. The top four sides will go through to a World Cup qualifier that will decide the last four berths in the expanded 14-team Cricket World Cup in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia.
Canada (5-4) stands second in the World League 2 table. The 14th-ranked Dutch top the table at 6-2.
Oman (2-2 with one no-result) stands sixth, ahead of Nepal (1-5).
Canada won all four matches in its opening tri-series in February-March, sweeping No. 11 Scotland and the 20th-ranked host Emirates. But the Canadians lost four in a row to the 18th-ranked U.S. and host Netherlands in August.
Canada which debuted in the T20 World Cup this summer in the U.S. and West Indies, is looking to get back to the showcase 50-over Cricket World Cup for the first time since 2011 after failing to qualify for the last three editions. The Canadian men also played in the 1979, 2003 and 2007 tournaments, exiting after the group stage in all four tournament appearances.
The Canadian men regained their one-day international status for the first time in almost a decade by finishing in the top four of the ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier Playoff in April 2023 in Bermuda.
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024
PENTICTON, B.C. – Rick Tocchet has already warned his Vancouver Canucks players — the looming NHL season won’t be easy.
The team made strides last year, the head coach said Wednesday ahead of training camp. The bar has been raised for this year’s campaign.
“To get to the next plateau, there are higher expectations and it’s going to be hard. We know that,” Tocchet said in Penticton, B.C., where the team will open its camp on Thursday.
“So that’s the next level. It starts day one (on Thursday). My thing is don’t waste a rep out there.”
The Canucks finished atop the Pacific Division with a 50-23-9 record last season, then ousted the Nashville Predators from the playoffs in a gritty, six-game first-round series. Vancouver then fell to the Edmonton Oilers in a seven-game second-round set.
Last fall, Jim Rutherford, the Canucks president of hockey operations, said everything would have to go right for the team to make a playoff push. That doesn’t change this season, he said, despite last year’s success.
“The challenges will be greater, certainly. But I believe the team that we started with last year, we have just as good a team to start the season this year and probably better,” he said.
“As long as the team builds off what they did last year, stick to what the coaches tell them, stick to the system, stick together in good times and bad times, this team has a chance to do pretty well.”
Some key players will be missing as Vancouver’s training camp begins, however.
Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin announced Wednesday that star goalie Thatcher Demko will not be on the ice when the team begins it’s pre-season preparation.
Allvin did not disclose the reason for Demko’s absence, but said the 28-year-old American has been making progress.
“He’s been in working extremely hard and he seems to be in a great mindset,” the GM said.
Demko missed several weeks of the regular season and much of Vancouver’s playoff run last spring with a knee injury.
The six-foot-four, 192-pound goalie has a career 213-116-81 regular-season record with a .912 save percentage, a 2.79 goals-against average and eight shutouts across seven seasons with the Canucks.
Allvin also announced that veteran centre Teddy Blueger and defensive prospect Cole McWard will also miss the start of training camp after each had “minor lower-body surgery.”
Vancouver previously announced winger Dakota Joshua won’t be present for the start of camp as he recovers from surgery for testicular cancer.
Tocchet said he’ll have no problem filling the holes, and plans to switch his lines up a lot in Penticton.
“Nothing’s set in stone,” he said. “I think it’s important that you have different puzzles at different times.”
The coach added that he expects standout centre Elias Pettersson to begin on a line with Canucks newcomer Jake DeBrusk.
Vancouver inked DeBrusk, a former Boston Bruins forward, to a seven-year, US$38.5 million deal when the NHL’s free agent market opened on July 1.
The glare on Pettersson is expected to be bright once again as he enters the first year of a new eight-year, $92.8 million contract. The 25-year-old Swede struggled at times last season and put 89 points (34 goals, 55 assists) in 82 games.
Rutherford said he was impressed with how Pettersson looked when he returned to Vancouver ahead of camp.
“He seems to be a guy that’s more relaxed and more comfortable. And for obvious reasons,” said the president of hockey ops. “This is a guy that I believe has worked really hard this summer. He’s done everything he can to play as a top-line player. … The expectation for him is to be one of the top players on our team.”
A number of Canucks hit milestones last season, including Quinn Hughes, who led all NHL defencemen in scoring with 92 points and won the Norris Trophy as the league’s top blue liner.
Several players could once again have career-best years for Vancouver, Tocchet said, but they’ll need to be consistent and not allow frustration to creep in when things go wrong.
“You’ve just got to drive yourself every day when you have a great year,” the coach said. “You’ve got to keep creating that environment where they can achieve those goals, whatever they are. And the main goal is winning. That’s really what it comes down to.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
