Last may, Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers dropped off a thirty-six-year-old man named Justin Bone in west Edmonton. Bone, who had a difficult upbringing, trouble with substances, and a long list of past charges, had been released from custody that April on the conditions that he undergo an addiction treatment program and not be in Edmonton unsupervised. Yet the RCMP escorted him into the city seemingly without a plan—despite having been warned that he was violent and likely to reoffend, despite there being few shelter options or open addiction treatment beds available, and despite the city’s growing houseless population.
Edmonton police allege that, three days later, Bone walked through downtown’s Chinatown and beat to death two men he came upon randomly. The city’s mayor, Amarjeet Sohi, would later call on the province to work with him to fix systemic issues and make the city’s streets safer. “This situation was not a one-off, or a mistake,” he said in a statement, according to the CBC, the following month.
