Ontario’s police watchdog says there’s “no reasonable grounds” to believe a Peterborough police officer committed a criminal offence after a woman suffered a broke arm during an arrest in October 2020.
In his report, Special Investigations Unit director Joseph Martino says around 8 p.m. on Oct. 5, 2020, Peterborough Police Service officers responded to a report of a woman lying on a ramp to the underground parking at the Simcoe Street terminal.
Martino says officers located a 24-year-old woman, who was determined to be of “unsound mind.”
The woman ignored repeated requests by police to vacate the area, Martino says, resulting in officers attempting to arrest her under the Mental Health Act.
The woman resisted, Martino wrote, but she was eventually apprehended.
“While doing so, an officer heard a popping sound in her arm,” Martino said. “She was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with a fractured humerus.”
Martino says the SIU’s investigators relied on three witness officer interviews and surveillance video to assist in the investigation. The complainant was unable to be located to be interviewed, and the subject officer declined to be interviewed, as is their legal right, he highlighted.
Martino’s report noted he was “unable to reasonably conclude on the evidence” that the officers did not have lawful grounds to apprehend the woman under the Mental Health Act.
“The complainant’s irrational answers to their questions and unusual conduct, including laying down beside a live lane of motor vehicle traffic, gave the officers reason to believe that she was at that moment incapable of taking care of herself because of mental impairment,” he said.
Comments