Officials with the Vancouver Police Department learned within hours that the gun brandished by a man recently killed by police had been a replica. Yet they decided against telling the public.
Officers on June 8 responded to 911 calls of a man carrying a gun near the city’s waterfront and letting his German shepherd loose. The dog reportedly bit someone. No evidence currently suggests officers knew the gun was a replica at the time.
Footage from the incident shows Officer Brandon Riedel joined fellow officers in confronting Vadim Sashchenko around 3 p.m. Sashchenko waved the replica and then threw it in the street toward Riedel, footage shows.
The fake firearm was mid-air when Riedel pulled his trigger. He fired four shots.
In emails two hours later, department officials prepared their first statement. Spokesperson Kim Kapp floated to Deputy Chief of Police Troy Price, Assistant Chief Kristine Buist and Acting Commander Kathy McNicholas whether they should reveal the fake gun detail.
“Please make any needed edits,” Kapp wrote, “including that we later discovered the firearm was a replica.”
They tweaked the statement twice yet never included it. Officers described Sashchenko as “waving what appeared to be a gun” in all drafts. They published the statement at 6:19 p.m.
The department excluded the detail again June 14 when officials released body-worn camera footage of the shooting. The 10-minute, beat-by-beat video is annotated yet also excludes any mention the gun was fake. The video also includes a segment magnifying Sashchenko’s hand and explicitly labeling the object a gun.
A video released by the Vancouver Police Department on June 14, 2024, misidentifies a replica gun as a real gun. Records show agency officials knew it was a replica gun days prior to releasing the video.
Courtesy of the City of Vancouver
Transparency advocates in Washington state say it’s sometimes understandable for an officer to mistake a fake firearm for a real one and believe they are in danger.
“But the fact that the firearm was a replica needs to be part of the discussion,” said George Erb, of the Washington Coalition for Open Government. “Withholding information invites suspicion. Transparency is a far better approach for building credibility and trust.”
Joyce Brekke, of the Washington Coalition for Police Accountability, said it’s commendable that police are now releasing body-worn camera footage to the public, but the information provided needs to be accurate and up-to-date.
“If it was determined after the fact, they could and should say ‘subsequently determined to be a replica,’” Brekke said.
The killing of Sashchenko was the first of two police fatalities in June that involved fake guns. On June 17, officers killed Jonathan West Nelson as he appeared to pull a handgun from his pocket as officers approached. It’s unclear when the department learned that the gun was also a replica.
In both instances, the fact that the gun was a replica was disclosed to the public by independent investigators weeks later – after several news agencies in the region reported on the killings.
When asked how and why the agency decided against disclosing the firearms as replicas, Kapp declined to discuss. Although the department had already released a video and several details about the case, Kapp said the case’s status prevented answering questions.
“It appears this case is still active and your questions pertain to evidence in this case,” Kapp said. “Once the case has been forwarded to the (prosecuting attorney) and the case is closed, we can respond to your questions regarding this incident.”