B.C.’s police watchdog determined that Kelowna RCMP did not use excessive force last year when detaining a man who was acting erratically.
According to documents issued by the Independent Investigations Office of BC, the man was detained on Dec. 1, 2017, and during his detention, he sustained fractured bones in his leg and left shoulder.
Three Kelowna officers were under investigation after a man was injured in his home, according to a report released Thursday.
The officers were called to the man’s home after he refused to go with his mother and a mental health nurse to either his mother’s house or the hospital.
The man said he was “too out of it to comprehend what they were trying to say” after officers were called to the home by the man. His mother and a mental health nurse were in the home during the incident and the man said the officers made him get off his couch, surrounded him and “they put their knee in my back and forced me to the ground and cuffed me,” according to the documents.
@iiobc is issuing a public report today in a case relating to a male who sustained serious injury while being detained by the RCMP in Kelowna: https://t.co/fOowY3A0RG
— IIOBC (@iiobc) October 11, 2018
The man told the Investigations Office an officer purposely bent his shin backwards on purpose.
“They pushed all their knees, three guys’ knees on my shin bone and it broke. They shoved me illegally and touched me illegally; I didn’t want to be touched at all,” he said in the report.
The man’s mother told the Investigations Office the man has a brain injury and mental disability and that she went to his home on Dec. 1 as she had concerns about his behaviour.
She said the man was hearing voices other than the police officer’s.
She said officers were respectful but the man did not want to leave his apartment. An officer said the man was resistant with going to an ambulance.
When officers restrained the man, she said he was braced against the door and when the officers struggled she saw his leg bend backwards, according to the documents.
She said she “did not believe the officers were trying to hurt (the man,)” as they struggled to detain him and that one officer told her it was a tight area so it was tough handcuffing her son, who has big wrists.
A second ambulance provided the man with sedation and he was taken to hospital.
During his statement, the man told the Investigations Office that “not all of this is true I was kind of out of it, I’d been staying up for three days straight.”
The Investigations Office determined the officers did not use excessive force because of the man’s auditory hallucinations, that he was obviously suffering from a mental illness, and that the officers were performing their duty while apprehending the man, “had (the man) co-operated with the requests of the officers no injury would have occurred).”
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