A Brantford police (BPS) officer won’t face charges after driving over a man with a police cruiser in May 2018. The incident put the man in hospital with serious injuries.
The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) decision ruled the officer was not guilty of criminal negligence or dangerous driving after the man, for reasons relating to inebriation and/or mental health issues, intentionally laid down in front of the officer’s SUV.
The incident happened during an investigation into an unrelated domestic assault call at a residence in Brantford near Market and Chatham streets during the overnight of May 19, 2018.
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On that call, an officer parked his police SUV on Market Street, blocking a laneway between a Variety store and a private residence.
After he returned to his vehicle from investigating the domestic dispute, he pulled forward and trapped a man under his vehicle. A tow truck was eventually called to lift the cruiser off the man.
The report says the man and several officers got into an altercation after he was removed from under the vehicle. He was eventually “controlled” and transported to hospital where doctors concluded he had second-degree burns to his back and buttocks, broken ribs and other injuries. He was eventually transferred to a second hospital for treatment.
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Key evidence in the decision was surveillance video obtained from a nearby dental office which captured the man walking toward the officer’s parked police vehicle on Market Street, and a prior occurrence in 2017 in which the man laid down on his back in front of a police cruiser during another police call.
“The officer had no reason at the time to suspect that someone might take the sort of unusual and drastic action adopted by the Complainant (man),” interim SIU director Joseph Martino concluded in his report.
“I am satisfied that the level of care exercised by the SO (officer) fell within the limits prescribed by the criminal law and that there are therefore no reasonable grounds for proceeding with criminal charges in this case.”
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