The DPCP announced its conclusions on the police intervention leading up to the assassination of Jacques Côté, who was brutally killed by his neighbor in a psychosis in Lac-Saint-Charles in April 2022. We learn that only a few minutes accounted for the death of the sixty-year-old.
The Office of Independent Investigations was tasked with investigating the case from the day of the murder, as a police operation took place at Kim Lebel’s home two days before the tragedy. The head of the Crime and Law Enforcement Service (DPCP) had announced in March that no charges would be brought against the police officers involved, but had not explained the reasons for his decision as the case was still before the court.
Photo from Facebook
After Kim Lebel was declared not criminally responsible on June 5 because of mental disorders, the director announced his conclusions on Tuesday.
The report explains that after police intervention, Lebel’s parents applied for a court order to enforce their son’s psychiatric evaluation. Document in hand, the defendant’s mother went to the SPVQ at 12:25 p.m., three hours and just before the tragedy, to plan the police operation.
A few minutes late
An intervention plan is then drawn up to ensure the protection of the officers involved within the next two hours. It is stipulated that the evening shift, which starts their shift at 3:00 p.m., will be in charge of the intervention.
At 3:15 p.m., the captain “emailed the approval to the officer and lieutenants in charge of the patrol,” the BEI report said. This is the signal that “the execution of the order can be carried out”.
However, the intervention will never take place.
As of 3:42 p.m., the 911 number received several calls about a man being violently assaulted.
Photo QMI Agency, Marcel Tremblay
The attacker is Kim Lebel.
The victim, his neighbor Jacques Côté, was unlucky.
From the obituary of Jacques Côté, Coop funéraire des deux rives
The man was repeatedly hit on the head with an iron bar, “like splitting wood with an axe,” the crown prosecutor had revealed in court at the verdict in June as criminally irresponsible.
No criminal fault to be considered in civil proceedings
The DPCP, after analysis, concluded that the SPVQ police officers did not commit any crime in this case.
“The possibility that the order could have been carried out before the tragedy occurred does not in itself constitute a breach of a legal obligation,” the DPCP notes, but adds a nuance.
“The conduct must constitute ‘a clear and material departure from the conduct of a reasonably reasonable person’ and thus distinguish civil fault from criminal fault.”
This distinction is important as Kim Lebel’s parents have indicated that they are considering civil proceedings against the SPVQ.
Photos Jeremy Bernier
“Normally, as soon as the policeman had the verdict in his hands, he should have delegated a patrol and got the little guy. It’s an unforgivable mistake,” family attorney Me Marc Bellemare said two weeks after the tragedy.
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