Police cleared after man severs fingers in cell door

SIU finds injuries not caused by any unreasonable force

BARRIE— Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) says police were not to blame for an accident in which a man in custody severed two of his fingers.

The SIU says officers with the Barrie Police Service tried to prevent the accident, which was caused when the man stuck his hand in the sliding door of his cell in a bid to stop it from closing.

The incident on Aug. 1, 2016, began when the 38-year-old man was arrested for public intoxication and brought to the station in Barrie.

The SIU found the man was belligerent and resisted being put into a cell at the station. The unit said he repeatedly shoved his hands into the path of the door as officers were trying to close it.

Although the unit found officers told him repeatedly to step back from the door and managed to remove his right hand from harm’s way, they say two fingers on his left hand were severed. Officers had to bring the man to hospital with a piece of one finger in a bag.

The man underwent surgery for his injuries. The SIU did not provide an update on his current condition.

In a report posted to the Ontario Attorney General’s website, the SIU concluded that the man was arrested on valid grounds and that his injuries were not caused by any unreasonable force by the officers.

“With respect to the force used by the officers in their dealings with the complainant, I cannot find that his injuries were caused by any force used by them to attempt to subdue the complainant,” the report reads. “In fact, from viewing both the booking video and the cell video, officers did no more than push the complainant into his cell, when he refused to co-operate and enter voluntarily.”