Officers’ actions in fatal arrest Saturday leave eyewitnesses shocked, spark excessive force allegations Criminologist calls behaviour ‘gluttony of physical punishment’ By: Tyler Searle Posted: 1:41 PM CST Monday, Jan. 29, 2024 Last Modified: 2:28 PM CST Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024 Updates

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Winnipeg police are facing allegations of excessive force after videos of an arrest that turned fatal show officers beating an intoxicated man with a baton and shocking him with a Taser before carrying his limp body away.

A University of Winnipeg criminologist who viewed the footage called it “gluttony of physical punishment,” and three eyewitnesses who captured the video of the incident in the parking lot of their Crestview apartment complex have been left shaken by what they saw.

“I’ve always been respectful of police, but after that, I will never trust a cop again in my life,” said Peter, who asked to be identified only by his first name.

Kristina Bauer and her partner Kevin Hoban were inside their apartment in the 200 block of Fairlane Avenue, between Freemont Bay and Buchanan Boulevard, at about midnight Saturday when they heard one of their neighbours yelling outside.

They watched the man stumble and fall in the parking lot in his bare feet. The man remained on the ground calling for help, saying he loves his children and yelling “come on” several times, Bauer said.

Bauer and Hoban were both disturbed by what they saw when the police arrived minutes later.

“They kept yelling at him to stop resisting arrest and then he wasn’t even moving,” said Bauer. “That man never stepped on his two feet again. He went straight from his back to a casket.”

Police say the 35-year-old man was intoxicated, and officers were called to the complex to intervene in a domestic incident involving his girlfriend and her three children.

Officers were en route to the building at 12:16 a.m., when the woman called again to report she had fled to a suite elsewhere in the complex, police said.

She said her boyfriend had “fallen down the stairs from their second-floor suite and was laying in the snow at the bottom of the stairs, and that he was slow to get up,” Winnipeg Police Service Chief Danny Smyth said, addressing the incident during a news conference Sunday afternoon.

Police arrived on scene at 12:23 a.m. and found the man lying in the parking lot, Smyth said.

When officers arrived, they approached the downed man and began kicking at his legs in an apparent effort to wake him up, Bauer said.

She said she believes he was startled awake, and did not realize police were there to arrest him.

When he did not immediately comply with police requests to turn onto his stomach, an officer produced a Taser and several officers piled onto the man, who remained on the ground and was kicking at officers, she said.

Video footage from Bauer’s doorbell camera — as well as phone recordings from Hoban and Peter — show almost the entire interaction with police.

The man’s girlfriend fled to Peter’s apartment after initially phoning police. He said she was pleading for police to stop hitting her boyfriend during the arrest.

Time-stamped footage from the doorbell camera shows the man slipping and falling in the parking lot at 12:18 a.m. He remains on the ground until 12:20 a.m., when the video ends.

The Free Press has not seen footage accounting for 12:20 to 12:24 a.m.

By 12:25 a.m. — two minutes after Smyth said police arrived — the recording shows three officers pinning the man to the ground. The man kicks an officer, who then pulls out a baton and begins to beat his legs.

A separate clip, recorded on Peter’s phone, shows police shocking him with a Taser during the arrest.

Bauer alleged the man was also punched and struck in the upper body. It is not clear from the footage where the blows landed.

At that point, the man stops moving.

The officers search him for weapons, turn him face down, order him to stand up and unsuccessfully attempt to pull him to his feet. The man slumps forward on his knees, appearing unresponsive.

Four officers then grab the man by his arms and legs and carry him to parked police cruisers, before the video ends.

U of W criminologist Kevin Walby said excessive force was used against a man who, at the time the video was taken, was not acting violently.

“You can see he is not swinging at anyone, he’s not aggressive.… I’m not saying he didn’t engage in some prior transgression, but at that time, there is no level of force that officers are facing,” he said Monday.

“He’s almost passed out in the snow.”

The man appears intoxicated to the point where a medical response would be more warranted than a punitive response from law enforcement, Walby said.

“(One) officer starts hitting him with a retractable baton. I don’t see any escalation in force, the guy didn’t pull out a bottle, or he didn’t roll over and grab an officer. He’s pinned,” Walby said. “He’s pinned and he’s squirming.”

While it isn’t possible to say for certain based on the angles of the videos, Walby said it appears that one officer is pinning the man’s neck, either with a knee or an elbow.

“They’re kind of blocked out by a third officer closer to the camera, but certainly looks like they’re pinning him in the kind of choke pin that killed George Floyd, for example. Which officers are being told not to do, because it kills people,” he said.

“I think he’s (Chief Danny Smyth) trying to engage in a PR campaign”–U of W criminologist Kevin Walby

The explanation of events offered by Smyth Sunday do not match up with the videos being shared online, Walby said.

“I think that the police chief is really just trying to manage public opinion. I don’t think that the claims that they make have very much to do with the reality of the way people experience police brutality and surveillance in this city,” he said.

“I think he’s trying to engage in a PR campaign.”

Smyth said an ambulance arrived to treat the man at 12:41 a.m., and officers and first responders worked to provide emergency medical care to the man when they realized he was in distress.

Bauer, Hoban and Peter said they did not see the officers perform CPR on the man who, at that point, had been placed on the ground behind the police cruisers and out of direct eyesight.

When paramedics arrived, Bauer said she heard one ask police “What did you do to him?”

The statement has not been corroborated by video footage.

The man was taken to hospital but died Saturday night, Smyth said, adding the woman who contacted police and her children were not injured.

WPS notified the Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba — which is tasked with investigating all serious incidents involving police — and it assumed jurisdiction over the investigation.

An autopsy was scheduled to take place Monday to determine the cause of death. The results will be sent to the IIU and will not be provided to the police, Smyth said.

When asked whether police had struggled with the man during the arrest, Smyth was unable to provide details.

“I know that our officers chose to restrain the male when they encountered him in the parking lot,” he said. “Certainly they will account for why they did that and what occurred leading up to that, but that will be up to IIU to determine.”

He said he was not aware of any visible injuries suffered by the man.

“That will form part of IIU’s investigation. It will be their role to determine what the cause of death was,” Smyth said.

The police chief said he does not believe the man was known to police.

He noted that he was aware videos of the incident were circulating on social media, and called the news conference to help provide context about the situation.

He said officers are well trained in safety, use of force and de-escalation tactics

“Every situation is a little bit different. Officers are trained to manage it depending on what they encounter in the field.”

As of Sunday evening, none of the witnesses who spoke to the Free Press had met with IIU investigators.

The man’s family declined to comment.

“It shook me more than I thought it would because everything I thought I knew about who’s here to protect us is not the same anymore,” Bauer said.

“They picked him up like a dead deer… his head was dangling down. He was just limp.”

— with files from Malak Abas

tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca