Man acquitted of assaulting police after ‘significant concerns’ in officer testimony

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This article was published 08/04/2022 (1513 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg man who says police repeatedly shocked him with a Taser without cause has been acquitted of assaulting two officers, after a judge ruled “inconsistencies” in their testimony and “less than satisfactory answers” left him in doubt of his guilt.

Shaun Anobis, 38, stood trial earlier this year on two counts of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest.

“This is a case where there are some issues with Sean Anobis’s evidence, so I cannot simply accept his denial of any assault,” provincial court Judge Robert Heinrichs said Tuesday. “However… there are more significant concerns with the evidence of police officers in this case.”

Court heard evidence at trial the Winnipeg Police Service responded to a report of a man brandishing a BB gun in the area of a Maryland Street rooming house June 8, 2020, at the same time Anobis was walking out of the house.

Anobis, who matched the rough description of the suspect but was not carrying a BB gun, testified he was at the house trying to retrieve his cellphone and initially believed police were there to help him.

Anobis testified he immediately complied with a police demand he take his hands out of his pockets as he walked out of the house but was given no other demand or warning before two officers grabbed him by the arms and took him to the ground.

The officers testified they told Anobis he was being detained, but no mention of it was made in their police notebooks or in use of force reports prepared by the officers, Heinrichs said.

“If this in fact was stated to Shaun Anobis at that time, this omission is significant,” Heinrichs said.

Officers refuted Anobis’s testimony he complied with their demand to take his hands out of his pockets, but the use of force reports said Anobis did comply. “This is a significant discrepancy,” Heinrichs said.

The officers testified after Anobis left the house, they walked him to a fence to search him, at which point, Anobis kicked at one officer and punched the other two times in the shoulder. Only then, the officers testified, did they take Anobis to the ground.

Officers testified they only took Anobis to the fence one time, but a cellphone video provided to court showed them taking Anobis to the fence after he had been forced to the ground, “contrary to the officers’ evidence,” Heinrichs said.

On that same video, one of the officers can be heard calling Anobis “a piece of s—-.” Officers tell Anobis to “stop resisting,” to which he replies: “I’m not resisting.”

Court heard testimony after Anobis was taken to the ground, one officer sat on his back, while another shocked his thighs and buttocks several times with a Taser, and a third officer punched him in the midsection.

Const. Arjun Sriram, the officer who wielded the Taser, testified he shocked Anobis two or three times, but an analysis of the device showed it had been activated 13 times within a 10-second period.

“Const. Sriram did not concede it could have been a lot more, even when presented with the Taser reports,” Heinrichs said. “This refusal to concede he could have been wrong is concerning.”

Cellphone video showed three officers restraining Anobis on the ground with two more standing close by.

“Was the use of a Taser multiple times really necessary?” Heinrichs said. “Would not some lesser actions on the use of force continuum, together with a little patience here, have been sufficient to take control of him?”

In a closing argument earlier this year, defence lawyer Martin Pollock said the case “displays the ugly side of policing in downtown Winnipeg.”

Police did not use a Taser on Anobis as a “mechanism for gaining compliance,” but as a “means of punishing Anobis — a show of force,” Pollock said.

Anobis filed a civil lawsuit against police last year. It remains before the court.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca