A Halifax man says he witnessed a doorman brutally assault a bar patron and two bystanders outside a downtown bar.
John Wesley Chisholm wrote Sunday in a Facebook post titled “Hello City – We have a violence problem,” he saw the doorman at the Carleton repeatedly beat a man in his 20s and forcibly hold him to the ground.
Chisholm said when the man’s friends tried to help him the doorman assaulted them as well.
He described in the post that the man was escorted out of the bar around midnight, on Argyle Street, after another patron complained he had slobbered in his drink – something Chisholm said didn’t happen.
The doorman apparently began shoving the man out the door without communicating with him or allowing him to get his coat. According to Chisholm, the man punched the doorman, at which time the bouncer began to beat the customer until he fell to the ground, hitting his head.
Shortly after that, the man attempted to return to the bar.
“There’s no talking. The bouncer runs at him. Smashes him through the door and onto the street. Once he’s on top of the kid on the sidewalk he grabs him by the hair and beats his head over and over against the ground. Wedging him against a parked car,” Chisholm wrote. “The bouncer is now on top of him twisting the kid’s face into the dirty ice at the gutter of the sidewalk.”
“One of his friends, a girl in her twenties, probably a university student, begs the bouncer to stop. ‘He’s not resisting’ she rightly cries. She gets too close. He shoves her hard up against the parked car. Smashing her head into the side mirror,” he wrote in the Facebook post.
Afterward Chisholm said the doorman punched another man.
Chisholm, a musician who has performed at the Carleton, said he tried to keep the situation calm between the doorman, who was still confining the man, and the man’s friends and growing crowd.
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After several minutes two officers responded to the scene.
While the man waited in a police car, Chisholm said the woman told the officers the doorman had assaulted her.
Chisholm said he offered to do a witness report of the three assaults he saw, but both officers declined to take his statement.
He said one of the officers told him a doorman is allowed to use as much force as they deem necessary in the situation.
The other officer refused to give him his full name or badge number, he said.
On Sunday, Staff Sgt. Lindsay Hernden told Global News there are several reasons why police officers may not take statements in that situation, such as if a witness refused to go on record, if statements were scheduled for the following day or if witnesses had been drinking.
Chisholm doesn’t drink and said he stated that to the officers on the scene.
“All parties were dealt with on the scene, and seemingly, based on the report, went their separate ways requesting no further police action,” said Hernden, “it’s essentially closed.”
Police spokesperson Lauren Leal said Sunday evening from the Halifax Regional Police (HRP) Twitter account that they were aware of the incident described by Chisholm and would be looking into it Monday.
“The young man declined to lay charges against the doorman. He spoke with officers and then left with friends. Though police can’t proceed with assault charges without the consent of the victim, we will reopen the file if he changes his mind,” Leal said.
Chisholm told Global News he would not be filing a report to the Professional Standards Office, a suggestion made by police spokesperson Wendy Mansfield, who chimed in on the Facebook post, which had garnered more than a 1100 shares and hundreds of comments by Sunday evening.
“I think the response was perfectly on par with the culture and standard practices at HRP,” he said. “I don’t want to single out these constables because they didn’t do anything outside the norm. Clearly, I was not happy with the communication last night. But I wasn’t at all surprised either.”
“The systems and processes that have been in place for a long time are clearly broken. They’ve institutionalized a cultural problem. We can’t use them to fix it. Look at the thousand or so people who came out of the woodwork today saying they’ve had similar problems,” says Chisholm.
“It’s just how it goes all the time downtown. We need to decide if that’s going to continue. I’d like to see it change,” he said.
“I’m glad no one was seriously hurt last night. And I’m glad the kids are not pressing charges. The battle is not late at night in front of a bar. It’s in the culture at HRP and the bylaws at Halifax Regional Municipality,” Chisholm said.
Mike Campbell, the owner of The Carleton, responded to Chisholm’s post, with a comment in regards to his employee. “Obviously we will take steps but I’m going to give him the opportunity to give me his side of the story before dispensing ‘justice.’ And yes, I’m a responsible owner and will accept responsibility,” he wrote.
Global News contacted Campbell, who said Chisholm’s post only tells one part of the story.
“His first person narrative, embellished a fair amount with interesting language is his take on the situation,” said Campbell adding the doorman was the only one who came out of the scuffle with injuries. “We’re going to wait to decide what exactly it is we’re going to do until I have all the facts, as opposed to burning my employee at the stake, which is what everybody else wants to see happen,” he said.
In regards to the other alleged assaults, Campbell says they were hitting the doorman as well.
Campbell said their doorman, who has worked at the Carleton for four years, has taken all required security courses and has only had to eject someone else once before.
“We need to do everything we can to curb any kind of violent behaviour on Argyle Street or on any street for that matter and the police response could probably be better,” Campbell said.
He said Chisholm is a “a very good friend” of his and the two have spoken on the phone about the incident.
“He’s reasonably appalled at the turn this took. The point he was trying to make seems to have gotten lost in all of it,” Campbell said.
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