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The Regina Police Service has new details on the events leading up to officers arresting a man over the weekend, an arrest over which a citizen has filed a complaint after recording a video of the incident.
Speaking with media after the monthly Board of Police Commissioners meeting on Wednesday morning, Chief Evan Bray said police believe the man was part of a group of five men involved in a violent home invasion.
“The males exited the house. Police were dispatched to that call … They attempted to do a vehicle stop, or did a vehicle stop on the suspect vehicle in which there were numerous people inside,” Bray said.
Police officers on the scene arrested four people in the vehicle; the fifth man, the one shown in the recorded home security video, ran away, Bray said.
“Our officers received indication from those that they arrested that that person was high on meth, and obviously had fled the scene,” Bray said.
He said officers then found the man, chased him down and arrested him, which was recorded on the video.
Prior to arresting him, Bray said police got a tip that a gun was used in the alleged home invasion.
“I can’t speak to what those officers were thinking or going through during that arrest, but I do know they would have been concerned about the possibility of a possession of a weapon, given the fact one was seen in the commission of the offence,” Bray said.
He noted that officers didn’t find a gun in the vehicle they pulled over or in the possession of any of the first four people they arrested.
The recorded video was originally posted to Facebook, but has since been taken down.
The person who recorded it submitted it as part of a complaint to the police service over how the officers arrested the man. It shows three officers chasing him down and taking him to the ground on a sidewalk in an area with houses and a park and a playground on one side of the street.
A fourth officer then approaches to join the melee.
Bray earlier told 980 CJEM that when that person came forward with the complaint and the video, “that was enough for us to say, ‘Yes, we’ll open up an investigation.’ ”
He explained that the provincial Public Complaints Commission (PCC) will oversee the investigation. The police service is waiting to hear back from the PCC on how it should proceed, either by conducting the investigation on its own or leaving it solely in the hands of the PCC.
Bray said that based on his personal experiences patrolling, detaining someone who’s resisting arrest while they’re high on drugs is not easy.
“People who have some intoxicants in their body, particularly drug intoxicants, can be challenging to arrest for sure,” he said.
“We’ve had cases where two or three or four officers have not even been able to control a person, because of how amped up they are when those situations are occurring.
“I don’t know in this case what the actual details were during the arrest … It will be through the investigation that we really learn what the challenges were during those few seconds of that arrest being made.”
