Halifax police officer who punched drunk, unco-operative man twice won’t be charged with excessive force: SIRT
HALIFAX, N.S. — Nova Scotia’s independent police watchdog will not be charging a Halifax Regional Police officer with excessive force after a March incident left a man with a brain bleed and fractured nose.
Metro police officers were called to a home in Halifax just before 7:20 p.m. on March 20 in response to a man claiming to be drunk and wishing to be taken to detox.
Two officers were dispatched, one of them confirming the man was flagged in the system for previous weapons assault charges.
Once inside the caller’s room on the top floor of a rooming house where several empty vodka bottles were strewn about, police said the man complained of stomach pain.
Emergency Health Services (EHS) paramedics arrived shortly thereafter, at which time the man, noted that his “time has come.”
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With the man becoming unco-operative, it was determined he should be taken to hospital. While loading him into a chair device to bring him down the narrow stairs, he forcefully kicked one officer in the chest and stood up, flailing his arms. In response, the other officer landed a punch to his face and took him to the floor, arresting him for assaulting a police officer.
The caller was then escorted outside under his own power, with police saying he was kicking at them the entire time, and eventually transported to the prisoner-care facility where, after a short deliberation, it was decided to bring him home.
Back at his residence just after 9:30 p.m., officers said it took some convincing to get the man out of their vehicle as he continuously asked to see a judge in the morning. Once outside and while having his handcuffs removed, the man spun around with one cuff still attached and got another single punch to the face from the same officer as before, subduing him again.
The man was then handed release documents and returned to his home.
About 30 minutes later, multiple officers and EHS returned to the scene after the man called police claiming to have been assaulted by an officer.
The man, with a cut above his eye and complaining of pain in his leg, claimed he was “thrown down the stairs, punched a couple of times in the face, struck in the ribs on both sides and held down, and their chest was sat on so they could not breathe.”
At the hospital, a CT scan was done to confirm the victim had suffered a subdural hematoma (bleeding on the brain) and a nose fracture, but an X-ray of the rib area came back with no issue. He was discharged the next day, and returned twice after with high blood alcohol levels, but didn’t require any treatment for his previous injuries.
When asked about the officer’s use of excessive force during the first incident, EHS members, who admitted concerns of being hurt themselves, said, “(the man) kicked at the officers 3-4 more times and was being subdued as gently as possible.”
They also said while the officer did have his knee on the man’s lower back, “by no means was he applying lots of pressure or affecting his breathing” and that police “never hit the patient while on the ground, it was the patient that was striking the officer.”
SIRT determined that since the man, noted to have “a significant size advantage” over the officers and EHS staff, had initially committed a criminal offence by kicking the officer unprovoked, the other officer’s subsequent use of force was not excessive based on the circumstances.
Regarding the second incident, and taking the man’s previous weapons assault charges into account, he was found to be displaying behaviours that were assaultive in nature once he was being removed from handcuffs, leading to the second use of force by the officer also found to be warranted.
