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The driver was arrested after a struggle and brought to hospital with what turned out to be two fractures to bones in the left side of his face near his eye.
Published Jul 09, 2023 • Last updated 16 minutes ago • 3 minute read
A still image taken from infrared video footage by EPS helicopter Air 1 of a Jan. 28, 2019, arrest that led to an investigation by ASIRT. The ASIRT decision draws attention to the heat, shown in white, of the rear wheels of the vehicle in the middle of the frame as evidence the suspect driver was stomping on the gas and trying to evade police. Photo by supplied
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Edmonton police should have been more careful when arresting a man who turned out to be having a diabetic episode prior to a traffic stop in January 2019, but did not commit a crime.
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That’s according to the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team, the province’s police watchdog, which was called in to investigate the incident since the man arrested suffered a serious injury.
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Early on the morning of Jan. 28, 2019, police received a complaint of a possible impaired driver. The Edmonton Police Service helicopter, Air 1, found a suspect vehicle at 4 a.m., southbound on 97 Street near Yellowhead Trail. Its video camera captured the incident, the footage in infrared with warm objects showing up white and cool objects black.
“The driver was driving very fast and dangerously, including braking quickly and spinning out in the middle of the road,” states a June 30 report by Matthew Block, ASIRT’s assistant executive director. “The (vehicle) turned into a residential area and drove through it at approximately 90 km/h.”
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The vehicle continued toward a service road perpendicular to the street but there was no access from one to the other. At 4:01 a.m. the vehicle struck the curb between the streets so forcefully it became airborne before “driving through the snowbank, driving through both lanes of Yellowhead Trail, and becoming stuck while partially in the median.”
Two minutes passed before the car got back underway, “erratically but slowly” around 50 km/h, this time south in the northbound lanes of 107 Street, while damaged from the collision.
The vehicle drove through the median to the southbound lanes, back through the median to the northbound lanes, spun out and stopped in the median.
When police vehicles close in and pin the car, Air 1’s video picks up the heat signature from its rear tires as the suspect driver was “pressing down the accelerator and trying to escape.”
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One officer pulled the suspect driver from the car and struck the top of his head with the butt end of his gun, the report stated. The officer then put his boot on the suspect’s head. Block wrote the officer did this to “control and distract him” because he was resisting, noting the ground was covered in ice and compacted snow.
Two other officers then began helping with the arrest, one of them making a “kicking motion” toward the suspect.
Block stated that while the kick went toward the upper half of the suspect’s body, “although it was not possible to determine where it landed due to the chaotic scene.” The officer would later say he delivered a “brachial stun” to the neck/shoulder area of the suspect, allowing he and his colleagues to control one of his arms, and a second to control the other.
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The suspect was arrested after a struggle and brought to hospital with what turned out to be two fractures to bones in the left side of his face near his eye. He was also treated for “diabetic issues.”
The suspect told police he was driving near Jasper Avenue and 90 Street that early January morning when he started to feel ill and assumed his blood sugar was dropping. He said he remembers nothing between deciding to drive home and being surrounded by police on the 107 Street median. He remembers an officer standing on his face, and that it felt to him like a dream or a game.
Block determined that there wasn’t enough evidence to determine if the officer kicked the suspect in the face, which would have been unjustifiable. But he said the butt-end and the use of a boot to control the suspect’s head were at the “high end of acceptable force.
“More care should have been given by the officers around uses of force to the head area of the (suspect).”
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