Nova Scotia’s independent police watchdog says it won’t press charges after its investigation into whether officers from the Halifax Regional Police deleted video of an arrest wasn’t able to find any evidence that an officer committed an offence.
On the morning of April 27, 2017, two university students were at Cheers Bar and Grill on Grafton Street when one of them was asked to leave the bar by security.
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Both men left the bar but one of them returned and approached a Halifax police officer in front of Cheers, eventually leading to an altercation that resulted in the man being put to the ground and arrested by the police officer.
The man’s friend attempted to record a video of the arrest on his cellphone. In the end both were arrested for being intoxicated and taken to Halifax’s police cells.
When they were released, the man who attempted to record the arrest noticed that there was no video on his phone.
The Serious Incident Response Team (SiRT) launched its investigation after the man complained to the HRP that an officer had deleted the video.
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SiRT’s investigation found that security video from Cheers showed the man attempting to record the final part of the arrest. However, a technological analysis of the phone could not confirm whether the video ever existed or if it had existed and been erased.
The report concludes that even if the video had been recorded the evidence would not have been able to identify any specific police officers who may have erased the video.
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