Health authority employee wants apology after police arrest him at murder scene

An employee of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority has said he was embarrassed and traumatized when he was wrongfully detained following a fatal stabbing on Henry Avenue, and he wants a formal apology from Winnipeg’s police chief.

Ray Samakese, a community services co-ordinator, said he and his colleagues were on their way back from a coffee run when they came across a large police scene near Henry Avenue and Main Street on June 18.

The group was told there had been an attack, so they went to check out the scene because they were worried a client had been involved. While he was in the Main Street pedestrian crossing, officers stopped him and told him he was under arrest.

“The police approached me while I was with my colleagues and wearing my WRHA badge, asked me to immediately take everything out of my pockets and told me I was being arrested for homicide,” he said. “My mind was blown, obviously.”

“I could not believe what was happening,” he said.

Samakese said he was handcuffed, put into the back of a police cruiser and was read his rights, even as his colleagues tried to tell police there’s no way he could be involved because he had been working with them all day.

“I tried to explain I was not the person they were looking for. My colleagues did the same and began recording things and advocating for me … the police did not seem to care,” he said.

He called their attitude “very dismissive” and said their conduct was unprofessional.

Samakese said he believes the fact he is an Indigenous man was a factor.

He said this incident has worsened his negative perception of police.

He told police numerous times he had done nothing wrong, but was detained for hours. He was released only when leadership from the WRHA office got involved.

The health authority’s interim CEO, Jane Curtis, said in an email to the Free Press on Monday she was “deeply concerned” about the incident, which happened near the WRHA office at 650 Main St. and the ACCESS Centre at 640 Main St., across from the Salvation Army shelter.

“While we do not yet know all of the details of how things unfolded, we are deeply concerned by the detention of our colleague,” Curtis said. “We are engaging collaboratively with the Winnipeg Police Service to learn more. We have offered support to all staff who were impacted by this incident.”

Samakese said when he asked why he was being detained, “they basically just told me: ‘I matched the description of the suspect,” and said he got no apology from the officers involved in his arrest. Instead he got sarcasm.

“The police officer just said: ‘Hey is that your boss over there?’ and I said: ‘Yeah. That’s the director.’ And he said: ‘Well maybe you should tell her to get new cameras.’”

Winnipeg police have since arrested a man in connection to the unprovoked stabbing.

David Bryan Siemens, 37, was arrested near Main Street and Logan Avenue Monday morning by police investigators who were in the area for an unrelated matter.

City police declined to comment on the detainment Monday, citing the ongoing investigation into the slaying of 55-year-old Ronald Alexander Grego Findlay. On Tuesday evening, the Free Press go not response to a request for comment related to concerns outlined by Samakese.

The 42-year-old said while he’s still shaken from the incident, he worries about what would have happened had it not been for his colleagues and bosses.

“If it was anybody else, they would have been taken to the police station. They would have been detained in custody. They would have ended up doing dead time and they would have waited for a court date,” he said. “It would have been a huge ordeal.”

morgan.modjeski@freepress.mb.ca