A Manitoba RCMP officer has been found guilty of failing to drive safely following a high-speed collision while on duty in 2023.
The crash involved Const. Rawanjot Pandher, who was responding to a priority emergency call in Portage la Prairie on the afternoon of June 30, 2023.
The incident occurred as Pandher raced eastbound on Saskatchewan Avenue with emergency lights and siren activated. Traffic had stopped in one lane at a red light, but Pandher continued through the intersection using the median lane at a high speed.
As she entered the intersection, her vehicle was struck on the driver's side, which caused it to slide into another vehicle that was already stopped.
An analysis of the police vehicle’s data recorder showed Pandher was driving 104 km/h shortly before the crash and accelerated to 116 km/h in the seconds leading up to the collision. The posted speed limit on that stretch of road is 60 km/h. Brake application was detected only in the final second before the impact.
While the officer maintained that her lights and siren were on and that other drivers should have been aware of her approach, some witnesses reported they did not see or hear those signals prior to the crash.
The judge determined that although the call Pandher was responding to involved an urgent report of a weapon being pointed at someone's head, which qualified the situation as an emergency, the officer still had a responsibility to assess traffic conditions before entering the intersection.
The crash happened during a busy Friday afternoon ahead of a long weekend, and the court found that the speed and manner of the response did not properly account for public safety.
Fortunately, no long-term injuries resulted from the collision.
Given Pandher’s clean record and the context of responding to what could have been a life-threatening situation, the court issued a reprimand rather than the $300 fine initially proposed by the Crown.
The judge acknowledged that the sentence was lenient but considered it appropriate given the circumstances.
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