The province's police watchdog says the arrest of a Cambridge man last June that resulted in the break-in suspect suffering three fractured ribs was not the fault of police officers.
The director of the Special Investigations Unit, Joseph Martino, found no reasonable grounds to believe a Waterloo Regional Police Service officer committed a criminal offence in connection with the injury suffered by the 31-year-old man.
Martino's investigation stems from a June 23, 2023 incident in which officers were called to respond to a break and enter at a residence in the area of Avenue Road and Elgin Street North.
The WRPS dispatcher advised police that a man known to the caller was breaking into the house and had broken down the door.
The family member also advised that she had left the house and was sitting in her car, a place of safety, waiting there until police officers arrived. No one had been injured and possible weapons were unknown. There had been previous police involvement at the house.
The man resisted arrest and officers grounded him with three strikes from a conducted energy weapon (CEW). Emergency Medical Services responded and removed the prongs from the CEW.
Body camera footage showed police arriving after the man was arrested, including some interaction with the suspect in which he claimed to live at the house and had keys to prove it.
A TikTok video of the interaction was also part of the investigation. It apparently shows the captured suspect lying on his stomach on the front porch, handcuffed with his hands behind his body.
The man yells at his family member, asking her if she saw what they were doing to him. He then yells at the three police officers above him, saying that they had beat the “crap” out of him and he “didn’t fight” them.
The SIU report says the suspect did not complain of any injuries then and the family member who reported the break-in was reluctant to proceed with charges. The man was released unconditionally.
When the man was arrested again a month later for weapons offences, he told officers that after his arrest in June, he sought medical treatment and was diagnosed with three fractured ribs.
That prompted the SIU investigation.
Martino accepted that the man’s injuries were probably incurred during his arrest, but he was not reasonably satisfied that it was attributable to any unlawful conduct on the part of the officers.
