Mounties won’t face charges after man hurt during arrest

Police watchdog says 3 Kelowna officers acted ‘as required’

Three Kelowna RCMP officers are not criminally responsible for injuring a man while detaining him in his home last December, the provincial police watchdog has found.

On Dec. 1, 2017, a man was detained by police under the Mental Health Act.

During the incident, the man suffered a fracture of the left tibial plateau (upper part of the shin bone that involves the knee joint) and a fracture to the left shoulder blade.

The RCMP notified the Independent Investigations Office of B.C., the agency that investigates all officer-related incidents resulting in serious harm or death.

“The issue to be considered in this case was whether any of the officers may have used excessive force during the detention,” Ronald MacDonald, chief civilian director of the IIO, wrote in a report released Thursday.

The man who was injured told investigators he was at home alone when his mother and a mentalhealth nurse arrived.

His mother told the IIO he lived with a brain injury and a mental disability.

That day, she contacted a mentalhealth worker because she thought her son needed an assessment.

He told the health-care worker he was hearing voices.

He was told he either had to go to his mother’s house or to the hospital, neither of which he wanted to do.

The man began shouting at the health-care worker, saying he didn’t want to leave.

The worker later told the IIO that with the “unpredictability of the situation at that moment, I felt we needed some backup.”

Police were called, and three officers arrived 20 to 30 minutes later.

The man told investigators the officers harassed him verbally and physically, forcing him to the ground and putting him in handcuffs.

“When I was arrested and cuffed . . . they pushed me forwards and they pulled my knee and an officer broke it and bent it backwards on purpose — not by accident, on purpose,” he said.

He said one of the officers kicked his shin and bent his leg backward.

“They pushed all their knees, three guys’ knees, on my shin bone and it broke,” he said.

During his statement to the IIO, the man said not everything was true and that he was “kind of out of it” at the time after staying up for three days.

His mother said she did not believe the officers were trying to hurt her son.

Investigators concluded the officers acted as required by their duties, and that had the man cooperated with the requests of the officers, no injury would have occurred.

“A police officer who is acting as required or authorized by law is, if he acts on reasonable grounds, justified in doing what he is required or authorized to do and in using as much force as is necessary for that purpose,” MacDonald wrote. “I do not consider that an officer may have committed an offence under any enactment and, therefore, the matter will not be referred to the Crown counsel for consideration of charges.”