Const. Colin Allooloo enters the Yellowknife courthouse for sentencing on Friday. (CBC)

A Northwest Territories RCMP officer's future with the force is uncertain after he was sentenced to a month of house arrest for using pepper spray against a youth in a police cell in Fort Simpson, N.W.T., three years ago.

N.W.T. Supreme Court Justice Leigh Gower sentenced Const. Colin Allooloo on Friday to 30 days of house arrest and subjected him to a 10-year firearms possession ban.

Allooloo was found guilty in September of assault with a weapon in connection with a 2006 incident at the RCMP detachment in Fort Simpson in which he shot pepper spray at a youth who was in custody.

The court is required to prohibit someone who is convicted of assault with a weapon from possessing firearms for 10 years.

The maxiumum penalty for assault with a weapon is 10 years in jail.

'Serious impediment' to work

The RCMP will now have to decide Allooloo's future in the police force based on whether he will be able to carry out his duties, Sgt. Brad Kaeding told CBC News.

"In this case, with a weapons prohibition and a custodial order — albeit one that's a house arrest situation — there are serious impediments to the continued employment," Kaeding said outside the Yellowknife courthouse, where the sentence was handed down.

Kaeding said the RCMP are held to a higher standard of behaviour because they must maintain the public's trust.

He could not say by when the RCMP will decide what to do with Allooloo's employment.

Would be devastated by losing job: lawyer

During Allooloo's trial, the court heard testimony from another RCMP officer who said he saw surveillance video that appeared to show Allooloo shooting pepper spray at the young man, who was 16 at the time, under the door of his holding cell.

In the sentencing hearing on Thursday, Crown counsel David Gates argued that the incident was a "stupid, senseless act of gratuitous violence against a defenceless child."

Gates had called for Allooloo to face jail time and be banned from using firearms.

"This was a very significant breach of trust by a police officer, and it called for a significant sentence as a way of expressing the community's concern for what happened," Gates said outside court on Friday.

But Allooloo's lawyer, Caroline Wawzonek, argued that Allooloo would be devastated if he lost his job with the RCMP as a result of the Crown's proposed sentence.

Instead, she called for a more lenient sentence that would allow Allooloo to continue working for the police force.

Wawzonek pointed out that Allooloo has no criminal record and is in good standing with the communities he has worked with.

The pepper-spraying incident, she said, was a momentary lapse of judgment borne out of his frustration with an unruly person in custody.