Police chief details events leading up to man’s arrest caught on video
The man being taken down by Regina police officers in a video posted on social media was a suspect in an armed home invasion and allegedly high on meth, says the city’s chief of police.
The arrest — which has sparked questions about use of force and resulted in at least one Regina resident making a complaint with police — is under investigation by the Regina Police Service and the Public Complaints Commission (PCC).
Police Chief Evan Bray says officers were dispatched early in the morning of Dec. 13 to a report of males rushing into a home with what the caller believed to be firearms. They then exited the house and left the scene in a vehicle.
“(The officers) did a vehicle stop on the suspect vehicle, which there were numerous people inside,” Bray said Wednesday following a Board of Police Commissioners meeting. “Ultimately, four people were arrested out of that vehicle and one fled.”
The four men arrested indicated to the officers that the suspect who fled was high on meth, he said. Officers set up a perimeter, located and arrested the man. That arrest was captured on a home security video and subsequently posted on social media.
“I can’t speak to what those officers were thinking ... but I do know that they would have been concerned about the possibility ... of a weapon, given the fact that one was seen in the commission of the offence and yet one was not located on the persons that they arrested originally ... or found in the car,” Bray said.
He released those details on the arrest to give context after a delegation, who presented at the meeting, voiced concerns about the video and the use of force see in it.
The video shows three police officers chasing a man and tackling him to the ground in front of a house. Once the man is down, seemingly held there by at least two of the officers, a fourth officer runs over. In motions partly obscured by a hedgerow, the officer can be seen three times swinging one bent leg back and forth toward the man on the ground.
“It looks like cop Number Four knee drops him with full weight of their body on that one knee,” Carmel Crowchild told the Leader-post on Monday, the same day she visited the RPS to make a complaint about the incident.
After the skirmish, officers then lift the individual off the ground, but he appears to have trouble standing. Next, he’s put into a police cruiser, but when the door is subsequently opened, he slumps out of the cruiser and onto the ground while police appear to search him. An ambulance later arrives and the man is placed onto a stretcher by police and paramedics, and loaded into the ambulance.
“When we’re making arrests, each case is so incredibly complex and different,” Bray said when asked if a suspect on drugs can make an arrest more difficult.
“I can speak from personal experience that people who have some intoxicants in their body, particularly drug intoxicants, can be challenging to arrest,” he said. “We’ve had cases where two or three, (even) four officers have not even been able to control a person because of how amped up they are.”
But he couldn’t speak specifically to the arrest in question and how much of a factor that was in how the arrest was conducted.
“I don’t think I can determine by watching that video whether or not the approved or trained techniques were used,” Bray added. “That’s something that will come back through the investigation.”
The PCC will decide how the investigation will proceed. There are three options: The PCC can conduct the investigation itself, it can have another agency conduct the investigation or it can have the RPS conduct the investigation with oversight from the PCC.
Bray said the RPS has yet to hear from the PCC about what option they have chosen.
In an interview Tuesday, Bray said he’d seen the video, but reserved further comment. He said the investigation will determine whether force was needed in the incident, and if so, whether the level of force used was appropriate. The RPS will then take next steps based on the investigation’s findings.
With files from Mark Melnychuk jackerman@postmedia.com