Peel officer charged in shooting of Black Mississauga mom was months into job
Valerie Briffa, who has since resigned from Peel police, has been charged with criminal negligence causing bodily harm, assault with a weapon and careless use of a firearm in the shooting of Chantelle Krupka, 34.
By Jason Miller Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Wendy Gillis Staff Reporter
Thursday, July 16, 2020
A former rookie Peel Regional Police officer who shot a Black Mississauga woman during a domestic call on Mother’s Day has been charged by Ontario’s police watchdog.
Valerie Briffa was still on probation, just months into the job, when she accompanied another officer to a Mississauga home on May 10 — an encounter that led to a violent escalation and ended with Chantelle Krupka, a 34-year-old mother, being Tasered then shot.
Following a two-month probe, Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) announced Thursday that Briffa is charged with criminal negligence causing bodily harm, assault with a weapon and careless use of a firearm, offences that each carry the possibility of jail time upon conviction.
In a rare move, Briffa has since resigned from the police service.
“It’s a victory that she’s no longer a police officer,” Davin Charney, Krupka’s lawyer, said Thursday.
Police officers in Ontario are rarely fired after facing criminal charges, and can be suspended with pay for years as the case makes its way through the justice system. The officer then usually faces a disciplinary tribunal to determine whether he or she will be fired.
The charges against Briffa come amid an international outcry over police accountability and officer use of force, particularly against Black and Indigenous people. Recent weeks have seen a wide-scale reckoning over police shootings of racialized citizens, including the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd.
As the charges were laid, Krupka and a group of about 30 supporters were protesting outside a Peel Regional Police division against police use of force and the fact that Krupka, herself, faces charges stemming from the incident. Krupka has said that, as a Black woman, she feared the police even before she was shot outside her home.
“I am afraid of police, because I have seen so many Black people killed or abused by police and I have bad experiences with them before,” she wrote in a recent complaint to the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD), the province’s police complaints watchdog.
Although Krupka says she was hoping for more serious charges against Briffa, she said Thursday’s developments were a step in the right direction.
“That goes to show that, when a community stands up behind someone and we make noise like this, we do get answers,” Krupka said.
The SIU has faced criticism for its high clearance rate for police officers who use force in the line of duty. Of the 363 cases closed in 2019, only 13 saw criminal charges laid, according to the watchdog’s most recent annual report.
The civilian agency has also been criticized for the length of its investigations, but both Charney and the Peel Regional Police said they appreciated that the SIU completed its probe swiftly.
“We have been asking the SIU for more timely investigations and appreciate that this investigation has been resolved quickly,” said the Peel Regional Police statement.
According to Krupka, she and her partner Michael Headley were unarmed when they were both Tasered outside her Mississauga home. It was as she lay wounded from the shock of the Taser that Krupka says a female police officer, now identified as Briffa, pulled out her gun and shot her without warning.
The bullet struck her in the abdomen and fractured her hip. Krupka is facing months of physiotherapy and walks with a cane as a result of her injury.
Krupka provided a detailed summary of the incident in her written complaint to the OIPRD, which she provided to the media.
The allegations contained in the complaint have not been proven.
She says the incident began after Krupka got into an argument with her ex-partner over access to their 10-year-old son. Krupka said she’d asked to see her son on Mother’s Day, and, when her ex-partner did not agree to this, they got into an argument by text, but there was “nothing threatening.”
Krupka said she later got a call from an officer saying police were outside, and that they had to come to tell her not to contact her ex-partner.
Krupka says when she refused to come outside to speak with the officer, he threatened to bring charges against her. She decided to call police to try to speak with the officer’s supervisor and was told by a dispatcher to go outside and speak with the police, according to her complaint.
Krupka says she and her boyfriend, Michael Headley then came out of the house and two officers, a male officer and a female officer, now known to be Briffa, got out of the vehicle and walked up to the home.
When Krupka says she told the officers they needed to leave, she says a male officer moved toward her and pulled out his Taser. Soon after, both she and Headley were Tasered; Headley had been standing about two metres away from the officer “and was not threatening him in any way,” according to Krupka’s complaint.
Krupka was Tasered soon after. She says it was as she was lying on her back and reaching out towards Headley that the female officer shot her without warning.
Krupka and Headley have since been charged with possession for the purpose of distributing, and with laundering proceeds of crime.
Briffa is scheduled to appear in court in Brampton on Aug. 4.
Charney, Krupka’s lawyer, said the next step will be to get the charges dropped.
“This is going to have a very significant impact on the charges that Chantelle is facing,” said Charney, who said he expects that the Crown prosecutor is going to be “very hesitant to continue to prosecute Chantelle in light of the fact that it would appear that she was wrongfully shot.”