Truro man complains of rough police treatment
TRURO — A Truro man is speaking out about rough treatment at the hands of an RCMP officer after he demanded the Mountie identify himself.
Wallace Fowler got a call from his girlfriend Monday afternoon as she was picking up her seven-year-old son from Colchester Christian Academy. Police officers were ticketing parents parked illegally outside the school and she was one of them.
“The kids were being let out early because of the eclipse,” Fowler said Tuesday.
When an officer started giving Michelle Ramirez a ticket, she called Fowler, who made his way to the school.
“I went over and I tapped on (the police officer’s) window and I said, ‘Excuse me, sir, can I get your car number and your badge number?’” Fowler said.
“And he rolled the window back up and sort of waved me to go on. . . . He said, ‘Get away from the car.’”
‘GET AWAY’
Fowler, 50, refused to budge.
“He said, ‘Get away from the car or I’m charging you.’”
The Mountie got on his radio and called for backup, Fowler said, noting more police showed up within minutes.
Two other parents, who are Black, were also getting tickets for parking illegally outside the school, said Fowler, one of the lead plaintiffs in a proposed class action involving people who experienced racial discrimination and racial harassment within the
Canadian Armed Forces over the past four decades.
“This was racial profiling,” he said of Monday’s incident. “For some reason, it just happened to be two Black families and a Latin girl. You call it what you want.”
‘THERE WAS A WHITE GUY’
Scholastica Anajekwu, a Black woman who was also picking up her kids from the school Monday, said she initially thought the same thing. But “there was a white guy that got a ticket as well. It wasn’t just Blacks.”
Fowler walked over to get names and phone numbers from the other parents getting tickets when the same officer who refused to identify himself approached them.
“He went over to the Black woman and he said, ‘Get away from her,’” Fowler recalled. “I said, ‘No, I’m getting her information because I’m filing a report against you guys.’”
Fowler refused to budge.
‘RUNNING AT ME’
“The man came running at me,” he said of the Mountie, later identified as Const. Adrian Cox, an officer with RCMP Northwest Traffic Services.
Fowler said the officer pushed him, and he pushed back.
“He said, ‘Get away from her or I’m charging you with obstruction,’” Fowler said. “I said, ‘Look man, you just assaulted me in front of these people.’”
Cox pushed him again, Fowler said. “I think I hurt his ego and at this point, this man, he’s trying to hurt me.”
Fowler said another Mountie then grabbed him and Cox had him by the arm.
‘MAN, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?’
“He twisted this arm so hard in the back, I was like, ‘Man, what are you doing?’ And then he put these cuffs on so tight and threw me in the cop car. And this is all taking place in front of the school, teachers, kids.”
Another officer soon removed the handcuffs, Fowler said.
He apologized, according to Fowler, and suggested he request bodycam footage of the incident.
“He was a nice guy, but at the same time, he just sort of sat back and let this guy do what he was doing and didn’t intervene.”
Fowler said he did not react violently when grabbed, though he wanted to.
‘WHO'S KIDDING WHO?’
“If I had hit him, I would have been Tased and probably shot up,” Fowler said. “Who’s kidding who?”
Ademola David, another parent who got a ticket in front of the school Monday, said he was picking up his two kids when he witnessed Fowler’s arrest.
“The policeman pushed the man around,” David said.
“Before we knew it, he was arrested.”
Fowler did not do anything to provoke the officer, David said, noting the situation did not seem to justify the use of force.
“This is not the right thing to do.”
The optics aren’t good, David said. “I think the situation should have been handled better.”
‘HE WASN'T AGGRESSIVE’
Anajekwu, the mother ticketed outside the school, said the officer didn’t need to use force on Fowler.
“He wasn’t aggressive or anything,” she said Tuesday.
She was surprised by Fowler’s arrest.
“I was also traumatized,” Anajekwu said. “My kids were inside the car and they were also scared.”
Fowler said he doesn’t know Cox.
PHYSIO REQUESTED
Fowler went to the Truro hospital after the incident to be treated for a shoulder injury.
“They put me on some muscle relaxants and they’re requesting physio from my arm being twisted back,” he said.
Cox did charge Fowler with obstructing justice.
“I’ve got to go down and get fingerprints and everything else, and if I don’t show up, there’s going to be a warrant for my arrest,” Fowler said. He went to the Bible Hill detachment and got the forms from an RCMP supervisor to make a complaint about Cox’s behaviour.
‘YOUR VOICE IS BEING HEARD’
Const. Dominic Laflamme, who speaks for the RCMP, confirmed an officer was ticketing cars on East Court Road on Monday when he was approached at about 2:20 p.m. by a man asking for his business card.
“We’re just making sure that the investigator . . . did what he had to do properly,” Laflamme said. “At this point, there’s no investigation internally.”
Fowler can complain to the local RCMP detachment or the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP, he said.
Fowler is due in Truro provincial court May 15 to answer to the charge of obstructing a police officer.