Mitch Croston has been identified by his mother Shelley Croston as the thirty-four-year-old man shot and killed by Calgary police in a southeast Calgary office building. Mr. Croston had recorded hip-hop songs and was trying to pursue a career as a DJ. She says that her son was struggling with schizophrenia since his twenties and more recently drug addiction. She wants answers to why police shot her youngest son and why they could not properly deal with a man struggling with mental illness.
In her words: “Why did they shoot him like that — my son had schizophrenia, he was struggling … they’re not trained that this person might be having an episode.” She says her son “wasn’t a dangerous person” and did not carry a gun or other weapons. She relates that he struggled with a fentanyl addiction and had periods of paranoia in which he was convinced people were out to kill him and her.
Mr. Croston had been evicted from his apartment in October and in his mother’s view “He was probably going to that (Franklin Industrial Park) building to get warm … he told me earlier he’d been sleeping in bus shelters.”
His mother says he had attempted to get more hospital treatment recently, without success. Instead, she says, he was told to rely on his medication.
The police killing of Mr. Croston was the third shooting by police in or near Calgary in the span of one week. Both of the other incidents also allegedly involved people struggling with mental health issues.
This killing shows the layers of violence and social murder both carried out and upheld by policing. An unhoused person who needed health care supports. As those resources are underfunded and diminished, police budgets continue to balloon. At the same time property interests ae prioritized over human life and someone is killed over seeking shelter in a vacant building.
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