British Columbia’s police watchdog says two Surrey officers’ use of force was “justified and lawful” in the fatal shooting of a knife-wielding man at a Corrections Canada halfway house last January.

A report from the Independent Investigations Office says officers with the Surrey Police Service responded to a report that the man was in breach of parole conditions, and when they entered his unit in the facility for inmates on conditional release, he confronted them with a knife.

The report by Chief Civilian Director Jessica Berglund says the man had been flagged as a “high-risk offender” with a history of self-harm and assaulting staff, and he told the responding officers he was “not going back to jail.”

The watchdog says an officer who witnessed the shooting recalled hearing one of the

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