SIU clears police in pair of Mississauga arrests

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Published June 10, 2022 at 7:12 pm

Two Peel police officers have been exonerated in connection with separate arrests where complainants suffered broken bones.

The Ontario Special Investigations Unit (SIU), which investigates when a person is injured in an interaction with police, released its findings on Friday. The arrests occurred within a 48-hour span on Feb. 10 and 12. The more recent involved an arrest when an officer responded to a noise complaint tied to intimate-partner dispute. The earlier arrest came during a stolen vehicle investigation.

On the afternoon of Feb. 12, Peel Regional Police officers went to an apartment in Mississauga. They spoke with a person who had registered a noise complaint and confirmed that a 56-year-old man was in the apartment with his common-law spouse, which breached his recent bail conditions.

When the officers entered the apartment and told the man he was under arrest, he got up from a couch with, in SIU Director Joseph Martino’s account, “his right hand raised in a fist in a boxer’s stance.” The subject officer (SO) grabbed the complainant’s right arm and forced him to the floor, where his left arm was fractured after he landed with it under his body.

“While I accept that the Complainant broke his left arm when he fell awkwardly on it having been forced to the floor by the SO (subject officer), there are no reasonable grounds to conclude that the injury was attributable to unlawful conduct on the part of the officer,” Martino wrote.

On the night of Feb. 10, a 34-year-old man who had been driving a stolen vehicle suffered a broken left ankle after trying to run from police. The officer who was the subject of the complaint used his CEW (conducted energy weapon) twice in an attempt to stop the suspect.

The SIU’s finding says that officers spotted “a vehicle being driven erratically at Brickstone Mews and Arbutus Way” in Mississauga shortly after 10 p.m. that night. The officers confirmed that the vehicle had been reported stolen in Toronto.

“Officers lost sight of the vehicle but began to check the area,” Martino reported.

The officer, who was in an unmarked cruiser, spotted the complainant in the underground parking in a building at 4011 Brickstone Mews. The suspect ran and the officer used his weapon. The officer used it again when the complainant reached a set of stairs leading to a fire exit door. The complainant “jumped part way down the staircase and tumbled the rest of the way to the landing” to get to the exit, then ran onto Burnhamthorpe Road West before stopping. That was where he was taken down.

It is believed the man broke his ankle during the tumble on the stairs. Martino said firing the weapon twice was legally justified.

“Though neither had any effect on the Complainant, as it seems the probes did not make it through his clothing to the skin, the tactic was a reasonable one,” he wrote. “The Complainant, aware that he was being followed by an officer, aware also that he was subject to lawful arrest, was bent on escape.”

The full findings from the SIU, which can contain graphic material, are available at siu.on.ca.

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