A Nanaimo RCMP officer has been cleared of wrongdoing in the arrest of a homeless man in a parkade who ended up with a fractured knee.
But in a report from the Independent Investigations Office of B.C. released Thursday, the police watchdog was critical of jail guards and officers who failed to summon medical help for the man for more than 10 hours, despite signs he was in pain.
It began on July 14, 2023, when police responded to a call from a security guard who was trying to remove people from the parkade. Police handcuffed one man and took him to the detachment, the Independent Investigations Office of B.C. said in a report released Thursday.
The watchdog interviewed the man who was detained, a police officer involved, the security guard and other witnesses, and found their accounts differed.
The man told the IIO that when officers arrived, they asked if he wanted to go home or to jail and he responded that he had no home.
The officers pinned him against a wall and arrested him, telling him to stop resisting, the man said, telling IIO investigators he had not been resisting.
He said one officer kneed him in the leg and he told police he thought his leg was broken.
Officers responded: “You’re homeless. It doesn’t matter,” he told the IIO, saying they threatened to throw him down a flight of stairs if he didn’t walk down it.
He said he was brought from his cell in a wheelchair the next morning and police called an ambulance. He had surgery and was in hospital for a week, he told the IIO.
Hospital records confirm his hospital stay and say he was admitted with a “mildly impacted intra-articular fracture of the lateral tibial plateau.”
The security guard told IIO investigators the man pulled away from officers when they tried to put his arms behind his back. The guard said he did not see officers make contact with the man’s legs and the man didn’t complain of any pain.
The officer under investigation described the man as “very agitated and aggressive” when police approached, saying he told officers they would have to use a Taser on him or shoot him if they wanted him to leave.
He was arrested for causing a disturbance and released when sober, the officer said.
Video from the police detachment shows the man limping as he walks from the police vehicle to the booking area and as he’s taken to a cell.
Footage of the man in his cell shows him in increasing pain during the 10 and a half hours he spent there, the IIO said in its report. Two overnight jail guards interviewed by the IIO said they conducted regular 15-minute checks on the man and neither was aware of an injury.
“Even though there is no evidence that he asked for attention, it would have been obvious to anyone watching him on the video monitors that he was in physical distress,” the IIO’s report says.
A guard who came on shift the next morning said she found the man lying down and noticed he was in pain. An ambulance was called.
An officer who had not been involved told the IIO the man said he did not know how his leg was injured because he had been drunk but he was sure it happened when he was arrested.
Sandra J. Hentzen, chief civilian director of the IIO, concluded the man’s mild fracture was consistent with his leg twisting accidentally as he was taken to the ground resisting arrest. The man told people he didn’t remember what happened to his knee and neither the arresting officer or security guard described a blow to the leg.
“The [man’s] allegation, then, is not sufficiently reliable to lead to a conclusion that he was subjected to any unjustified use of force,” Hentzen wrote in her report.
What is of concern, Hentzen said, is that neither the jail guards nor officers on duty summoned medical aid for more than 10 hours, despite clear indications that the man was in pain.
A medical expert told the IIO the delay in care would not have rendered the man’s injury more severe or more difficult to treat.
“That does not, of course, excuse the lax care the [man] experienced during his stay at the RCMP detachment,” Hentzen wrote, noting similar concerns have been noted in other investigations.
