Family rejects SIU report clearing OPP in 2024 killing of Anisininew man

[Michael Jack]

SIU concludes no basis for criminal charges against OPP for fatally shooting First Nations man

Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) has released it’s final report into the death of a First Nations man who was shot by an Ontario Provincial Police officer in the city of Kenora, a little more than a year ago.

Bruce Frogg, 57, was a member of Wawakapewin First Nation and living in Kenora at the time when he was shot at Anicinabe Park on June 25, 2024.

The incident happened just days after National Indigenous Peoples Day celebrations in the park and during the month of the 50th anniversary of Anicinabe Park’s occupation by First Nations protesting for better living conditions, education, and access to their traditional territory.

More than two dozen people witnessed the events of that day at the park and the SIU says numerous videos were obtained from civilians and security cameras at Anicinabe Park.

The SIU says Frogg, who is only identified as the Complainant in the report, was captured on video as he entered the park “pushing a shopping cart, poured a liquid substance on the wood box outside of the office building, and lit the shopping cart on fire.”

According to the SIU, OPP officers were dispatched to the park shortly after 12:00 p.m. following a call an employee of the park’s office.

“He was in a highly agitated state when he showed up at the park office with his cart and containers of flammable liquid. The Complainant would proceed to splash the fluid around the exterior of the building and in his cart of wood before setting the cart on fire beside an exterior wall of the office next to a wooden box containing firewood.”

When the first OPP officer arrived on the scene at 12:05 p.m., Frogg was carrying around a machete in each hand.

According to the report, the OPP officer “asked him to calm down and drop the knives. The Complainant was extremely upset and waved the machetes in front of him. He said that no one helped him.”

As more officers arrived on the scene, the report says Frogg “challenged the officers to shoot him.”

As the standoff continued, Frogg took three steps in the parking lot in direction of the firefighters and a group of officers when an officer fired three times.

Frogg collapsed to the ground at 12:22 p.m. and [was] dragged away from the building and handcuffed. Paramedics administered emergency medical aid and Frogg was transported to “Lake of the Woods Hospital where he underwent surgery for bullet wounds to his chest and abdomen.”

Frogg was pronounced deceased just before 4 p.m.

Roughly one hour after the shooting, the involved officer was recorded on an OPP in-car camera saying “I don’t know if that was the right call.”

In his decision, SIU director Joseph Martino wrote “on my assessment of the evidence, there are no reasonable grounds to believe that either officer committed a criminal offence in connection with the Complainant’s death.”

“When SO #2 fired his rifle three times at the Complainant, he did so, I am satisfied, in defence of his person and others around him from a reasonably apprehended attack,” wrote Martino.

Martino says none of the officers were equipped with a less lethal force use of force option such as rubber bullets. The use of a conducted energy weapon was also ruled out “because it appeared that the Complainant had doused himself with a flammable liquid.”

Martino found there is “no basis for proceeding with criminal charges in this case. The file is closed.”

Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN), which represents 49 First Nations in northern Ontario says it rejects the SIU report.

In a statement, NAN Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler wrote, “the report does not analyse why, when four separate officers had firearms drawn, only one officer discharged their weapon. The report also does not cite an example of a particular person who was specifically threatened such that Bruce needed to be killed. Beyond citing that the other witness officers were ‘on the brink’ of firing their weapons, the report neither analyses nor makes findings as to why only one officer perceived sufficient danger such that they chose to discharge their weapon.”

Fiddler says there is also no analysis in the report on Frogg’s state of mind at the time, how his mental state could have led to his actions or how officers are trained to respond to a person in emotional crisis.

“We do not accept the SIU’s explanation of the circumstances that led to this officer taking Bruce’s life, and so we reject the conclusion that the officers’ actions were reasonable and justified,” wrote Fiddler.

“We believe the SIU’s investigation has raised more questions than answers, and that this process is severely flawed. We are working closely with the family and community to explore other avenues for justice,” added Fiddler.

https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/s ... tions-man/

[Michael Jack]

Ontario’s police watchdog says it has found no reasonable grounds to believe a provincial police officer committed a crime when he fatally shot a 57-year-old man at a Kenora, Ont., park last year.

The Special Investigations Unit says OPP officers were at Anicinabe Park on the afternoon of June 25, 2024, when a man doused himself with gasoline, picked up two large knives then set fire to a food concession.

The SIU says the man was standing close to the fire when officers asked him to move away so it could be extinguished.

It says the man stepped toward firefighters while brandishing knives, and a police officer then shot the man with a rifle.

The agency says the man was taken to hospital where he underwent surgery for bullet wounds to his chest and abdomen but later died.

The SIU says the officer’s use of gunfire constituted reasonable force, and there’s no basis for proceeding with criminal charges in the case.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 2, 2025.

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[Michael Jack]

An investigation has cleared an Ontario Provincial Police officer who shot and killed a man who had doused himself in gasoline, started a fire at a park office in Kenora and came at first responders holding meat cleavers.

The incident began in and around the administration office building at Anicinabe Park just after noon on June 25, 2024.

Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit took over the case because someone had been killed during an interaction with police.

The man, pushing a shopping cart full of wood, doused himself in gas, poured it on the office building and the wood in the cart.

He set the cart on fire and left it beside the building, setting it on fire. He then clutched the two meat cleavers, hollering that no one had helped him.

The first OPP officer arrived at 12:05 p.m. and tried to speak with the man.

“He asked him to calm down and drop the knives,” the SIU said in its incident narrative.

“The complainant was extremely upset and waved the machetes in front of him. He said that no one helped him.”

More police arrived in the following minutes, including the canine unit. Firefighters were also quickly on the scene.

Police “continued to talk to the complainant, attempting to have him drop the knives,” the SIU said.

“The complainant refused and challenged the officers to shoot him. He walked back and forth beside the northwest side of the building, the north side of which was ablaze.”

An OPP officer who arrived around 12:13 took charge of the situation and devised a plan involving firefighters.

“The details of the plan remain unclear on the evidence, but involved firefighters hosing down the north side of the building with water,” the SIU said.

“It was hoped that the water would, directly or indirectly, whether by distracting the complainant or causing him to lose balance, permit the officers an opportunity to safely take the complainant into custody.”

However, as firefighters hosed down the building in the area next to the man, he walked off the deck in front of the burning building toward police and firefighters, still holding the meat cleavers.

“He took three steps in the parking lot in the direction of the firefighters and group of officers … when the officer fired three times,” the SIU said.

“The complainant collapsed to the ground. The time was 12:22 p.m.”

A short time later, the officer who shot and killed the man was back in his vehicle, taking deep breaths.

“I don’t know if that was the right call,” he said, in a statement recorded on the camera inside the police vehicle.

In his decision, SIU director Joseph Martino wrote that under the circumstances, the officer fired to protect himself and other first responders from an imminent threat.

While officers with less lethal weapons (ARWEN) had been called in, they were at a training session and were far from the scene. And there was an imminent threat, he wrote.

“Evidence includes the knives in the complainant’s hands, his movement in the direction of the officers and firefighters, his proximity to the police and firefighters when the gunfire occurred (and) his volatile behaviour to that point,” Martino wrote.

Second thoughts

“In the aftermath of the shooting, (the officer was) expressing second thoughts about what had happened, but indicating he fired his weapon because the complainant was moving towards him and others.”

Other officers on the scene said “they were on the brink of firing their weapons as well when (the officer) discharged the C8 rifle,” Martino wrote.

“There was no reason to believe that the complainant was not then on the precipice of a knife attack on the first responders.”

He also analyzed the decision by the lead officer on the scene to try and distract the man using the firehose. While it wasn’t successful, Marino said there were no apparent better options.

“None of the officers were equipped with an ARWEN and the nearest one was some distance away … at a training exercise,” Martino said.

“The use of a (stun gun) was also ruled out because it appeared that the complainant had doused himself with a flammable liquid. A police dog was on scene, but the handler … decided against the use of the dog. With the fire continuing to grow, the dog handler was concerned that a dog deployment would place the complainant at greater risk from the blaze.”

Unfortunately, the plan using the firehose failed, and it led to the man walking away from the fire and toward the emergency responders, leading to the shooting.

“The officer had a difficult decision to make and not much time in which to make it,” Martino wrote.

“The fire was growing, and the complainant was standing perilously close to it … As all other tactics had failed to that point, and there was some prospect of (the) plan succeeding.”

Read the full decision here: https://siu.on.ca/en/directors_report_d ... ?drid=4552

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[Michael Jack]

Hey bro, I’m checking out of here tomorrow. Pissed off. Just let the other bro know,” 57-year-old Bruce Frogg texted his oldest brother Joshua on June 20, 2024 from a halfway house in Kenora. “I’m just gonna clear it with p.o. [parole officer]. I’m free already. For two weeks already. So I’m packing tonight. I’ll let you know tomorrow where I’ll be at.”

Five days later, Bruce doused the ice cream shop in Anicinabe Park with gasoline and set it on fire while brandishing machetes. A responding OPP officer shot him dead with three bullets from a rifle.

“Something must have transpired,” Joshua said. “He was on track and all of a sudden… it didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense.”

All accounts were that Bruce had been sober and getting better in Kenora. The hunter and trapper from the fly-in community of Wawakapewin First Nation, who had spent much of his life in Wapekeka First Nation, was enrolled in programs and finally getting the help he needed. Frogg had struggled with alcohol, agitated by a harrowing childhood of loss, physical and sexual abuse.

Joshua was waiting on word to pick his brother up. On the same day Bruce texted him, he also phoned his daughter Esther in Wunnumin Lake First Nation and told her he was looking forward to coming home and seeing his grandchildren.

Joshua has been on leave from his job as Wapekeka’s band manager for a year since the shooting. One of Bruce’s daughters died of overdose, weeks after his death. But as unexpected as Bruce’s extra-judicial killing had been and as hard as life has been since, the family was equally shocked when a report from Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit director was published this week, clearing the officers involved.

A vigil for Bruce Frogg was held in Anicinabe Park at the spot where an OPP officer shot and killed him on July 2, 2024. Photo: Jon Thompson.
Twenty-two minutes passed between noon that day, when Bruce set fire to the building and an adjacent firewood cart “in a highly agitated state,” and the gunfire that killed him. Water from a firehose struck him indirectly and according to the SIU report, he then “removed his shirt, walked off the deck down a ramp onto the parking lot. He took three steps in the parking lot in the direction of the firefighters and group of officers including SO #2, when the officer fired three times.”

“I don’t know if that was the right call,” the officer said breathing heavily and sitting down in his cruiser, a minute after he shot Bruce.

SIU director Joseph Martino found that officer, “reasonably believed he had no choice but to shoot him,” while he cited concern for Bruce’s safety standing near the burning building to clear the negotiator, whose choices, “did not amount to a marked and substantial departure from a reasonable standard of care in the circumstances.”

Martino’s report also ruled out non-lethal alternatives. The Emergency Response Team happened to be training elsewhere with the Kenora OPP’s non-lethal projectile weapons, the flammable fluid disqualified the use of Conductive Energy Weapons (better known as Tasers), and he agreed with OPP’s choice against deploying the police dog, fearing it might chase Bruce back into the fire.

The SIU declined an interview for this story.

More questions

The SIU’s Indigenous representative delivered the report to Bruce’s family at Nishnawbe Aski Nation’s office in Thunder Bay on June 27. Joshua said the representative had no answers beyond the report’s contents.

“The justification they had was that he committed arson and he had weapons. That’s it,” Joshua said. “It’s beyond my comprehension for that to justify that use of deadly force.”

As a hunter familiar with rifle use, Joshua asked, why three shots in the chest and abdomen? How was the officer who shot Bruce justified in feeling threatened when there were four officers with guns trained on him and only one fired? How was anyone threatened when they were standing so far away? How did an armed standoff that Kenora OPP attended only weeks earlier with a man who was armed end without gunfire but this one went differently?

Joshua couldn’t believe the toxicological report that showed Bruce had used crystal methamphetamine. So far as he knew, Bruce had never done a harder drug than marijuana.

And while the officers exercised their right not to speak to SIU, Joshua insisted his brother had a right to life.

Bruce Frogg’s daughter Esther says he’d planned to visit her and her children in Wunnumin Lake First Nation. Photo provided by the family.
“Anytime there’s a police shooting, there has to be an inquest. That’s the next thing,” he said. “We need to know why he was shot. They said they’d exhausted all the options. For me, it was a quick projection and he was executed. That’s how I feel.”

Nishnawbe Aski Nation, the advocacy group representing the chiefs of 49 First Nations in far northern Ontario including Wawakapewin and Wapekeka, issued a press release on Wednesday, rejecting the SIU’s findings.

“We are familiar with the SIU investigative process and do not see how this report could properly answer the question of whether an officer made “the right call.” We do not accept the SIU’s explanation of the circumstances that led to this officer taking Bruce’s life, and so we reject the conclusion that the officers’ actions were reasonable and justified,” the statement from NAN Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler reads.

Bruce Frogg was known as “the professional” for his bush skills. Photo provided by the family.
“We believe the SIU’s investigation has raised more questions than answers, and that this process is severely flawed. We are working closely with the family and community to explore other avenues for justice.”

Bruce’s daughter Esther said NAN’s sentiment echoes her family’s passion and resolve for justice.

“I want whoever did this thing to be held accountable. This is unfair what happened to him,” Esther said. “We’ve agreed unanimously and collectively as a family that we are not going to let this go.”

She echoed NAN’s frustration that the SIU report failed to take systemic factors into account, including Bruce’s history.

Young Trauma

When Bruce was 5 years old, his oldest brother drowned falling through the ice on a snow machine. He lost another brother to overdose, a third to suicide. He had permanent injuries and skull deformities from the beatings his father laid on him, which he interpreted as the legacy of residential school. He and three other boys would hold sleepovers at each other’s homes to stay safe. When they were living in KI, Joshua would show up in Wapakeka bruised and barely walking.

In a 2005 interview with this reporter, Bruce said he was sexually abused as a boy by Ralph Rowe, who Wawatay News has called “Canada’s most prolific pedophile.” The Anglican priest and scoutmaster who traveled to fly-in First Nations by float plane in the 1970s and 1980s is believed to have sexually abused as many as 500 boys across northern Ontario and Manitoba.

Bruce recalled how every night, Rowe would take a different child into his tent. Adults didn’t believe those children who tried to speak up because the accusations were being made against a man of God. By Bruce’s count, at least thirteen of his scout troop members took their own lives.

From a young age, Bruce showed an uncanny proclivity for hunting, trapping, and tracking. He was widely known as “the professional” for his bush skills. He became legendary at nine years old for shooting his first moose — an accomplishment not only at his young age, but because he did it with a .22, a calibre of rifle usually reserved for hunting rabbits and other small game.

That’s how Esther will remember her father: on the land. Despite Bruce having spent the 1980s and early 1990s in and out of jail, and then the mid 2000s onward back and forth on the streets of Thunder Bay to the north, she said he was always there for his family. Her earliest memories involve Bruce taking her out on the land to teach her everything he knew.

“For me personally, he was a loving father. He raised me with strong morals. He raised me to be a strong woman,” she said.

“He was a good person, a loving person, always ready to help, help in any way he can. He was an avid outdoorsman. He loved his land. He loved his people. And that’s how I want people to know him.”

A vigil for Bruce Frogg was held in Anicinabe Park at the spot OPP shot and killed him on July 2, 2024. Photo: Jon Thompson.

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[Michael Jack]

Investigation 'severely flawed,' says Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief

Ontario's Special Investigations Unit (SIU) says there is "no basis" to charge police officers in the death of 57-year-old Bruce Wallace Frogg.

An Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officer in Kenora shot and killed Frogg during an incident at Anicinabe Park on June 25, 2024, Ontario's police watchdog said in its report released Friday.

Video footage from the cellphone of witnesses and a police cruiser camera showed Frogg holding two knives and walking toward the officers, said the report.

The officer shot Frogg with a rifle from a distance of six to eight metres, the report said.

After shooting Frogg, the officer sat in his police vehicle, where video footage captured him taking deep breaths and saying, "I don't know if that was the right call," according to the report.

SIU director Joseph Martino said in his decision that he was satisfied the officer, referred to in the report as Subject Officer (SO) #2, used a reasonable amount of force in defence of himself and the other people present.

"Nothing short of gunfire had the immediate stopping power required of the moment," said Martino.

The SIU investigated the conduct of both SO #2 and an officer who assumed command of the operation soon after police first arrived. The commanding officer was referred to in the report as SO #1.

Neither of the officers agreed to be interviewed by the SIU or release their notes, said the report.

NAN rejects SIU's conclusion

In a statement released Wednesday, Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler described the investigation as "severely flawed." He said the report leaves many unanswered questions and doesn't provide accountability to NAN or Frogg's family.

"We reject the conclusion that the officers' actions were reasonable and justified," said Fiddler.

"There is also no analysis in the report on Bruce's state of mind at the time, how his mental state could have led to his actions or how officers are trained to respond to a person in emotional crisis," Fiddler said.

Fiddler said the SIU investigation only focused on the specific actions police took at the time, and didn't consider "signifcant and broader systemic issues."

Frogg had previously struggled with addiction and significant trauma, his family previously told CBC. They said he was a survivor of the convicted sex offender and ex-priest Ralph Rowe. He also had multiple family members, including his father and other siblings, who attended residential school.

Frogg was 'upset,' said 'no one helped him': report

The SIU report included an "incident narrative "that was written based on interviews with witnesses and video footage.

In it, the SIU said Frogg was "in a highly agitated state" when he pushed a shopping cart full of wood to the park office and set it on fire, said the report.

A park employee called police and fled through the office's back door as the building caught fire, it said.

The first officer who arrived at the scene tried to speak to Frogg, said the report.

"He asked him to calm down and drop the knives. [Frogg] was extremely upset and waved the machetes in front of him. He said that no one helped him," the report said.

In other instances in the report, the knives are referred to as meat cleavers. Images of the two knives collected at the park after Frogg was shot are included in the report and labelled as meat cleavers.

Frogg "challenged the officers to shoot him," according to the report.

An officer reported that Frogg "wanted to talk with a case worker," according to radio communications logs.

Report details failed attempt to take Frogg into custody

SO #1, who assumed command of the operation, made a plan that involved having firefighters spray their hoses at the part of the building where Frogg was, the report said.

"It was hoped that the water would, directly or indirectly, whether by distracting [Frogg] or causing him to lose balance, permit the officers an opportunity to safely take [Frogg] into custody."

After Frogg was hit with water, he walked away from the spray and off the deck of the building, said the report.

"He took three steps in the parking lot in the direction of the firefighters and group of officers, including SO #2, when the officer fired three times," said the report. After the officer shot him, Frogg had bullet wounds in his chest and abdomen, it said. He was taken to the Lake of the Woods Hospital for surgery, but died later that afternoon.

SO #1 was investigated for the decision to have firefighters spray water towards Frogg, "which seems to have been the catalyst for his movement off the porch," said Martino in his report.

Officers considered using a "less-lethal" weapon, it said, nothing radio communication records show they requested an Anti-Riot Weapon ENfield or "ARWEN" multiple times, but none arrived in time.

An ARWEN is a launcher that can shoot items including plastic projectiles, chemical irritants or smoke canisters.

Using the available Conducted Energy Weapons (CEWs), commonly referred to as Tasers, or the police dog on scene were ruled out for various reasons, said the report.

With these factors considered, Martino said he did not view SO #1's conduct as meeting the standard of criminal negligence causing death.

"There is no basis for proceeding with criminal charges in this case."

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