The Director of the Special Investigations Unit, Joseph Martino, has found no reasonable grounds to believe that a Waterloo Regional Police Service officer committed a criminal offence in connection with the serious injury suffered by a 31-year-old woman in April.
In the morning of April 30, 2022, officers were dispatched to investigate a disturbance call at a residence in Cambridge. A man had called to report that his daughter was at his residence throwing chairs and threatening to burn the house down. He wanted her removed from the property.
Officers located the 31-year-old daughter outside the home, and after a brief chat and confirmation that the father did not wish to pursue charges, the officers allowed the woman to go. When officers soon after learned that there was a warrant out for her arrest, they located her, handcuffed without incident, and placed in the backseat of the officers’ cruiser.
When the woman managed to slip the cuff off one of her hands and began to reach into the compartment behind the backseat where a backpack that had been removed from her had been placed, she was removed from the cruiser, falling a short distance onto the ground in the process.
A struggle ensued. While an officer pushed the woman into the back of the cruiser, her face struck the partition and she sustained a nasal bone fracture.
While accepting that the woman’s broken nose was incurred in her dealings with officers around the time of her arrest, Director Martino found there were no reasonable grounds to believe that the injury was attributable to any unlawful conduct on the part of the officers. Accordingly, there was no basis for proceeding with criminal charges in this case. The file has been closed.
