The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) has ruled there is no basis for charges in a one-year-old Collingwood case involving a police standoff that resulted in a man jumping out a window and suffering two broken legs.
According to the SIU report released today, the standoff took place at an apartment on Ontario Street on Oct. 8, 2018.
The facts contained in the SIU report are as follows:
Police arrived in the morning to check on the wellbeing of a 30-year-old male after receiving a call about the male barricading himself in his room.
The man refused to let officers in his bedroom and told them he was armed with knives.
OPP called in an emergency response team and tactics and rescue unit (TRU).
TRU officers gathered at the man’s door and asked him to come out of the room. He refused, told them he had knives and threatened to kill them.
Two TRU officers used a fire truck with a bucket and tower to raise themselves to the level of the man’s window.
The man waved knives “angrily in the officers’ direction” as the two TRU officers approached his bedroom. The officers asked him to put down his knives and said they were there to talk to him.
As the bucket reached the window, the other officers broke through the man’s bedroom door with a battering ram and discharged a stun grenade. Two officers fired a total of 10 plastic projectiles from an Anti-Riot Weapon Enfield and one discharged a continued energy weapon (like a TASER) at the man for 15 seconds.
The man was holding a mattress in front of him and was not immobilized by the weapons. He jumped through the screen with a knife in hand and lept toward the aerial bucket where the two officers were.
He didn’t make it and hung on to the edge of the bucket while the officers inside attempted to hold him and prevent him from falling. Neither was able to get a firm grip, the man slipped out of his black jacket and caught the bottom of the bucket with one hand before falling the rest of the way.
When he was on the ground, a TRU officer shot him once with his anti-riot weapon. The man was arrested and taken to the hospital. A news release at the time stated he had serious injuries and was later transported to Sunnybrook Hospital for treatment.
The SIU director stated he was unable to find fault with the officer’s actions, stating the force used by officers was reasonably necessary.
The director did note, however, he found it “disconcerting” to learn the man was struck with a plastic projectile from an anti-riot weapon once he had fallen to the ground.
A witness officer said he saw the man was still holding a knife after he had fallen.
Other evidence suggests the knife fell to the ground ahead of the man.
“Be that as it may, the knife would, at the very least, have been close to the Complainant on the ground and reasonably accessible, and I am therefore prepared to give [the officer] the benefit of the doubt on this issue given the volatility of the events around him,” states the directors report on the incident.
The SIU report states the man was “quite clearly suffering from a mental disorder at the time and in possession of knives with which he threatened to harm himself and others.”
“The situation was fraught with danger, and the officers were entitled to proceed on the basis that the [man] was ready and able to inflict grievous bodily harm or death given the opportunity,” states the report. “I am satisfied on reasonable grounds that the force used by the officers was measured, proportional to the threat at hand, and reasonably necessary in the circumstances.”
An SIU examination of the scene turned up one knife with a serrated ten-centimetre blade, and found the man’s jacket, which had come off him, had probes from an energy weapon attached.
The SIU is called in to investigate any incident involving police officers where there has been a death, serious injury, or allegations of sexual assault.
You can read the full report on the Oct. 8, 2018 incident in Collingwood by SIU interim director Joseph Martino here.
