SIU Clears Peel Police Officer in Brampton Arrest
Published February 20, 2018 at 1:33 am
Peel police officers have been cleared by Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit after a 39-year-old man was seriously injured during an arrest in Brampton.
Peel police officers have been cleared by Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit after a 39-year-old man was seriously injured during an arrest in Brampton.
“… The actions exercised by the police officers fell within the limits prescribed by the criminal law and there are no grounds for proceeding with charges in this case,” said the SIU’s director Tony Loparco.
The incident unfolded on Jan. 9, 2017, at 2:06 a.m.
An officer was dispatched to a residential address, where a taxi driver had reported his passenger, an intoxicated man – who filed the complaint against police – who damaged his cab.
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The man was apparently delusional, on the ground, and possibly overdosing.
The officer requested backup and reported the complainant resisting efforts to handcuff him, and ripping the taxi sign from the cab and holding it above his head while turning toward police.
The complainant was tackled by the officer and both men fell to the ground, with the complainant landing on his face.
The complainant continued to resist being handcuffed, police say, and the officer “delivered several elbow strikes to the complainant’s right side and upper back.”
When the second officer arrived the complainant was handcuffed.
But not before a physical confrontation with the complainant, who suffered an eye injury.
Paramedics transported him to hospital where the doctor said his eye injury was superficial but the man also had fractures to his nose and one rib.
The complainant acknowledged being intoxicated at the time, the investigation finds, and had no recollection of his interaction with police until being removed from the ambulance with two officers present.
Two civilian witnesses corroborated the officers’ account of events, telling investigators the complainant was intoxicated and damaging the taxi cab.
“I find that their behaviour was more than justified in the circumstances and that they used no more force than necessary to subdue the complainant who was clearly intoxicated, resisting and actively struggling,” said Loparco, adding while the man’s injuries likely resulted from his interaction with police, “I cannot find these actions to have been an excessive use of force.”
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