There are no reasonable grounds to suggest Airdrie RCMP committed an offence while responding to a 2020 threats complaint near Linden, Alta., according to the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team.
ASIRT, which investigates allegations of misconduct involving Alberta’s police and incidents resulting in injury or death, was directed to investigate after a man was injured during his June 2020 arrest.
In a Thursday ruling, ASIRT assistant executive director Matthew Block concluded the man was obstructing the police officer and resisted when RCMP tried to arrest him.
“The (officer) was justified in a minor use of force to overcome this resistance and arrest him,” Block said. “As a result, there are no reasonable grounds to believe that an offence was committed.”
Just before midnight on June 30, 2020, three officers responded to a threats complaint at a home in Linden, 96 kilometres northeast of Calgary. The subject of the complaint was a man in a white Chevrolet truck, ASIRT found.
While police were at the complainant’s home, another man drove by in a silver Ford, but Mounties thought it was the same vehicle, so an officer drove after him and stopped him.
“The (man) immediately got out of his truck and walked toward the … police vehicle,” Block said in a ruling Thursday.
“He walked close enough to the driver’s side of the vehicle to be out of view for the vehicle’s front camera.”
The man told the RCMP in a statement after the fact that he was driving home from a friend’s house when police stopped him.
According to an exchange detailed in the report, the officer repeatedly told the man to return to the truck. In his statement, the man refused repeatedly, telling the officer he did not respect him.
He also told the officer that he was “pissed off.”
According to the officer’s statement, he claimed the man yelled as he exited the vehicle, saying, “You don’t have the right to pull me over. You’re a member of a corrupt government. I don’t respect you.”
Standing at the edge of the camera’s field of view, the pair faced each other while “talking animatedly.”
ASIRT said the officer reached for the man’s left arm, but the man pulled away. The police officer then placed both hands on the man’s shoulders and pushed him back, turning him slightly.
“The (officer) put one arm around the (man’s) neck from behind and appeared to pull the (man) to the ground as they left the camera’s field of view,” said Block in the ruling.
The officer told the man he was under arrest for not obeying the commands of a police officer and resisting arrest.
When the man accused the officer that he was going to get beat up for standing outside of his vehicle, the officer said it was because the man didn’t respond.
“I arrested, you resisted,” the officer said before repeatedly asking the man to put his hands behind his back and “stop resisting.”
While the pair was on the ground, the officer said the man tried getting up, so he “delivered three or four punches” to the man’s head “to distract him.”
Two police officers showed up to help the responding officer handcuff the man and bring him to a police vehicle. Officers also called paramedics, who found a small cut on the bridge of the man’s nose but no other injuries.
The man reported his injuries included a scratched cornea, a cut above his left eyebrow, damage to the cartilage in his nose and numbness in the right side of his face.
While he did not complain of pain, paramedics and officers thought the man was belligerent and had been consuming alcohol.
The man was charged with impaired driving, refusing a breath demand and two counts of obstructing a police officer. Charges were withdrawn on June 17, 2021.