Ontario’s police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit, has determined that there are “no reasonable grounds” to charge any officer from the Barrie Police Service in connection to a serious hand injury sustained by a 23-year-old man during his arrest last November.
At about 11 p.m. on Nov. 12, 2018, the man entered a vehicle on Montserrand Street in Barrie with two others, the SIU says.
The vehicle in question was reported stolen and was under surveillance by officers from the Barrie Police Service, according to the SIU.
Before the three people entered the car, a tire deflation device was placed under one of the vehicle’s tires to prevent it from being driven away, the SIU adds.
The officers’ plan was to box the car in with police vehicles and to approach it on foot afterward to investigate the occupants.
The plan didn’t play out as the officers had hoped, and the 23-year-old ended up making his way around the police cruisers, colliding with them in the process, and fleeing east on Montserrand Street toward Beacon Road, the SIU adds.
Eventually, the man ditched the vehicle near the CTV building south of Essa Road, the SIU says.
The man then fled into a wooded area and hid in and around a storm drain west of the Four Points hotel before he was found by Barrie police officers and dogs, according to the SIU.
“There is some evidence the complainant immediately complied with requests by the officers that he show them his hands and not move; however, he was nevertheless bit by the dog and kicked two or three times by the dog’s handler,” the SIU’s case report read.
This evidence shows the 23-year-old was then struck by a conducted energy weapon by another police officer, followed by a stomp to the right hand by a third officer, as well as a few more kicks to the head, the SIU says.
“The evidence of the arresting officers, while not entirely consistent, paints a different picture,” the case report reads. “They are all agreed that the complainant, when found lying on the ground, physically resisted his arrest by refusing to voluntarily surrender his hands.”
According to the SIU, each officer denied stomping on the man’s hand, and none of them indicate having seen anyone else do so.
The man was subsequently taken to the hospital and diagnosed with a fractured right hand, the SIU says.
Joseph Martino, the interim director of the SIU, said in the case report that there are “no reasonable grounds” to believe any Barrie police officer committed a criminal offence in connection to the man’s arrest and hand injury.
“Police officers are immune from criminal liability for force used in the course of their duties provided such force is no more than is reasonably necessary in the execution of an act they are required or authorized by law to do,” Martino said in the case report.
“It is plain and obvious that the officers were proceeding to lawfully arrest the complainant at the time force was administered.”
According to Martino, police drone footage shows that one of the officers was never near enough to the man to deliver the alleged kicks.
It’s also a possibility that the man’s hand could have been fractured in the vehicle collisions that preceded his arrest, and there’s other evidence suggesting the injury occurred before his encounter with officers, Martino said in the report.
“I am reasonably satisfied that the force used by the officers to overcome the complainant’s resistance and effect his arrest did not run afoul of the latitude prescribed by the criminal law,” Martino concluded.