In just 13 days, three Canadian police officers have been intentionally killed in three distinct attacks, marking an unprecedented spasm of anti-police violence in the country. The deaths of OPP officer Tarun Bali, Toronto Police constable Marc Pinizzotto, and Montreal police officer Mohamed Benredouane have shocked the nation and raised concerns about the safety of law enforcement.
Details of the Attacks
On June 9, OPP officer Tarun Bali was struck and killed by a vehicle in Hearts, Ont., while attempting to locate an 18-year-old who had escaped from a hospital. The 18-year-old is charged with Bali’s murder.
Two days later, on June 11, Toronto Police constable Marc Pinizzotto was shot and killed while executing a raid on an address connected to a series of attacks in the city, including a shooting at the U.S. consulate.
On Monday, a targeted ambush on Montreal police officers killed Mohamed Benredouane. The alleged killer left behind a rambling 104-page manifesto branding police as “hired guns of the bourgeois class,” according to the National Post.
Other Incidents of Anti-Police Violence
The deaths of Bali, Pinizzotto and Benredouane do not include other Canadian police officers who have survived recent attempts to kill them. The Montreal attack saw a second officer wounded by gunfire, but in stable condition in hospital. On the same day, two RCMP officers were shot in Melville, Sask., and their alleged assailant charged with attempted murder.
Historical Context
This spasm of anti-police violence across multiple attacks in quick succession has no precedent in Canadian history. Even across decades with dramatically higher rates of violent crime, it was unusual to see more than three police officers killed in an average year.
A 2010 report by Statistics Canada found that 133 police officers were murdered on duty between 1961 and 2009 — a time period that includes some of the most violent years in Canadian history. The year 1975 retains the all-time record for highest Canadian murder rate at 3.03 homicides per 100,000 population, compared to Canada’s most recently tabulated homicide rate of 1.91 per 100,000. Still, across the 48-year period covered by the report, the number of police officers murdered on duty came to an average of 2.7 per year.
What’s more, most of those officers were killed in an era where protective vests were not a standard component of Canadian police uniforms. “Nine in ten police officers were shot to death, most of whom were not wearing a protective vest,” reads the report.
A more recent survey out of the University of Ottawa found that 166 Canadian police officers had been killed in “intentionally harmful acts” in the 60-year period from 1962 to 2022. Here again, this worked out to an average of 2.7 Canadian police officers being intentionally killed on duty over the course of a typical calendar year.
Impact and Comparison to the U.S.
Within the space of just two weeks, Canadian law enforcement will be organizing more funerals for murdered members than used to be the case across an average year. In fact, June has proved to be such a violent month for Canadian police that officers are being killed at a frequency more typical in the United States — a country far larger and far more violent.
