Ontario’s police watchdog announced on Monday that two Guelph police officers will not face charges following the arrest of a suspect in a domestic assault investigation in October 2021.
Special Investigations Unit director Joseph Martino found no reasonable grounds to believe that the officers committed a criminal offence in connection with a fractured orbital bone suffered by a 42-year-old man.
“While I accept that the complainant’s orbital bone was fractured when he was forced to the ground by subject officer #1 and subject officer #2, I am unable to reasonably conclude that his injury was attributable to any unlawful conduct on the part of the officers,” Martino said in a report.
Officers were called to the Royal Inn and Suites on Carden Street on Oct. 17, 2021, for an assault.
The SIU said police received a call from an employee who reported that a woman came to the front desk with her infant child and asked that the police be called.
“An employee reported that a woman had been assaulted by her boyfriend while holding her infant child in her arms,” the SIU report stated.
Officers arrived and arrested the man, who then spat in an officer’s face while being taken down a stairwell in the hotel, the SIU said.
The agency detailed that officers pushed the man up against the wall and then took him to the ground. The SIU added that officers pinned the man to the floor before being stood back up and taken to a waiting police cruiser.
The man was taken to the police station but then sent to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with a fractured right orbital bone.
“Whether intentional or the inadvertent result of his agitation, a bellicose complainant repeatedly spat in the officer’s direction and was told to stop doing so,” Martino said.
“When the complainant continued with his behaviour and spat in officer’s face, the officers were entitled to resort to a measure of force to prevent the continuation of what was, in effect, an assault by the complainant.”
The SIU noted that the man who was arrested did not take part in their investigation.
The full report can be found on the SIU’s website.
The SIU is an arm’s length agency that investigates events involving police in Ontario that have resulted in death, serious injury or reports of sexual assault.