‘Fairly standard application of force’: B.C. IIO rules in favour of officer who kicked, kneed suicidal man

'Fairly standard application of force': B.C. IIO rules in favour of officer who kicked, kneed suicidal man
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B.C.’s Independent Investigations Office has found an RCMP officer’s use of force was “fairly standard” in her response to a mental health call for a suicidal man.

On Aug. 19, 2020, a mother in Chemainus called RCMP for a mental-health check on her son, to report he had made suicidal comments.

In the call, the mother informed RCMP that her son was facing charges of assault and attempted assault and had a record of firearm offences, uttering threats and criminal harassment. She also noted he had previously made suicide threats and spent time in a psychiatric ward.

Another civilian witness told RCMP the man had told her a very specific suicide plan, and RCMP officers determined they had enough evidence to apprehend him under the Mental Health Act.

The man told officers he did not want to go with them, but they grabbed him and took him down on the ground, face down. The man says a female officer kicked him and stomped on him, though he was not sure where he had been kicked.

The civilian witness who told RCMP of the man’s plan said the officers took him to the ground “very quickly” and that an officer put her knee on the side of his neck, then kneed him in the left side when they were struggling to put handcuffs on him.

The man was examined at the hospital and kept overnight under the Mental Health Act, then released the next morning.

Later that day, the man was re-admitted to hospital after intentionally overdosing, then left the hospital later that day after refusing to stay, according to the IIO.

On Aug. 21, he was taken back to hospital after overdosing again, where he was “screaming out in pain and clutching his abdomen.” He received emergency surgery, where he was found to have a five-centimeter tear in his stomach which was determined to have happened within the previous 30 hours.

The IIO does not compel officers to submit their notes, reports, or data, and in this case, the officer submitted no evidence.

“On the evidence as a whole, it appears likely that [the subject officer], in the course of struggling to subdue [the affected person]…may have done more than simply hold her knee on his shoulder, and may have applied a knee strike, or two, to his torso,” the report by Ronald MacDonald, chief civilian director of B.C.’s IIO, says.

“This would be a fairly standard application of force by an officer aiming to gain control over a resistant subject’s arms and hands for the purpose of handcuffing, and would not generally be viewed as an application of excessive force in most circumstances.”

The report found there are not reasonable grounds that the officer committed an offence, so the matter is not being referred to Crown counsel for charges.

It also found the man’s abdomen wound was unlikely to have been caused by the officer, as the interaction between the man and the officer occurred around 40 hours before he went to hospital with the injury.

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