WARNING: This article contains content that may be disturbing
The family of a man who was arrested by police after reportedly behaving erratically in south Edmonton and who died in hospital 12 days after he was taken into custody, has released video of the police encounter and is asking questions about the methods police used to arrest him and about the process for the investigation into the matter.
Alberta’s police watchdog is investigating police officers’ actions in the arrest of 46-year-old Mazin Zaim on Sept. 20 because he was taken to hospital immediately following the arrest and later died there.
“The Zaim family is demanding answers as to why police responded to a mental health crisis with such force that they believe led to their son’s death,” reads a statement issued by Hearther Steinke-Attia, the lawyer representing the man’s family.
On Oct. 6, the Edmonton Police Service issued a news release to advise that the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team is investigating what happened.
The EPS said officers were deployed to a “trouble-with-person” call on Shaske Crescent after someone reported a man had been “acting erratically and possibly impaired, while swinging an ice chipper at the ground and at a passing vehicle.”
Police said when officers arrived in the South Terwillegar area, they approached Zaim and told him to lie on the ground and to put down the ice chipper.
They said while he was on the ground, they put him in handcuffs and as they were doing so he “went into medical distress” so officers called paramedics and immediately began performing CPR. He was then taken to hospital.
Steinke-Attia said Zaim’s family believe he was experiencing a mental health crisis at the time, and that the video, which was taken by a neighbour while they were inside their home, raises questions about the way police arrested Zaim.
“It did not need to go immediately hands-on with handcuffing him and hogtying him,” she said. “One has to question why they took the heavy response.
“It’s just a visual that you’ll never get out of your head. I’ve watched it multiple times trying to understand what other possible approaches the officers could have used in that situation.”
The video released is just over six minutes long. Steinke-Attia said the full video is about 13 minutes but the family did not release the entire video because the rest of it showed continued lifesaving efforts after Zaim went into medical distress.
The video begins by showing Zaim kneeling in a suburban street as five police officers approach. As they get close he lies on the ground on his stomach and puts his arms out above his head. One officer appears to lift Zaim’s arm at which point his legs kick up in the air while he is lying on his stomach.
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Three officers then appear to be hovering over Zaim and it is not entirely clear how much weight they are putting weight on him or where — two other officers stand further back. One of those two officers appears to be holding out a Taser. Then, as it appears the officers are trying to handcuff Zaim, one officer’s leg appears to be placed on Zaim’s upper back.
The officer standing next to the officer with what appears to be a Taser then approaches and also appears to put his knee in the same area on Zaim. It is not clear exactly when Zaim was in handcuffs, but shortly after the four-minute mark of the video, it is clear that Zaim appears to be “hog-tied” so that restraints on his ankles are connected to the handcuffs.
Police are then seen rolling Zaim over and onto his back and the officers are no longer on top of him. The officers then appear to spend a couple of minutes checking on Zaim and his restraints and just before the six-minute mark they begin to start trying to give him CPR.
Steinke-Attia said Zaim was house-sitting for a friend in the area at the time. She said the friend spoke to Zaim the day before and that he was not acting like himself and that he seemed to express fear of things that were not actually there.She acknowledged that Zaim has a history of cocaine use.
Steinke-Attia noted that while it can be difficult for officers to put handcuffs on to someone, she believes it took officers “quite some time” to handcuff Zaim.
At about the 40-second mark of the video, a strained voice can be heard and it sounds like “I can’t breathe.”
“You can hear him say repeatedly, ‘I can’t breathe’ until he stops breathing,” Steinke-Attia said. “And they tether his feet to his handcuffed arms … I can’t imagine why that was necessary.”
The lawyer added she believes Zaim was being compliant. She said while an autopsy could still take up to another 12 months to be completed and that a cause of death has yet to be determined, the family is concerned about the officers appearing to have been on top of him for the length of time that they were.
“You can see the officers putting a substantial amount of weight on his upper chest, and we believe neck — and head area,” Steinke-Attia said. “One would have hoped that those tactics … would have been discontinued by the police service.”
She said the video made the family think of George Floyd, the man who died in 2020 after a Minneapolis police officer leaned on his neck and back for nine-and-a-half minutes.
Steinke-Attia also said the family is concerned that the director of law enforcement and ASIRT were not informed of Zaim being in medical distress at the time of his arrest until after he died.
“Taking 12 days to report this to the director of law enforcement does need feel like accountability and transparency,” she said.
ASIRT confirmed to Global News that it was not informed of what happened until Zaim had already died. Both ASIRT and the EPS said they could not comment further on the matter as it remains under investigation.
Dan Jones, a criminologist and the chair of justice studies at NorQuest College told Global News he thought it was odd that ASIRT was not notified until after Zaim’s death. Both he and Steinke-Attia said waiting so long to inform the watchdog risks losing evidence and also could impact how police are viewed.
“Anytime an individual gets arrested and ends up going into the hospital, even if it’s for a broken arm, if they get admitted, there is a policy that says they must notify the director of law enforcement immediately,” he said.
Speaking broadly about mental health calls, Jones said while more and more people — and often police themselves — believe police should not be sent to such events, the reality is they will be.
“It’s an unfair expectation. We send police officers to these things and then we have a judgement that they shouldn’t have gone. Who else is going to go?” he asked, adding that the calls could be in the middle of the night.
“I don’t expect every police officer to be a psychologist, but I think we can educate our police services on how to respond to mental health calls.”
“Partners have to start working 24 hours a day. We need psych nurses 24 hours a day. We need to fund PACT teams and have more of them working 24 hours a day.”
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