Monday, January 17, 2011

Charges recommended against Kelowna Mountie

In case you have not been following the news about a Mountie kicking a individual in the face during a takedown, you can read the background here. The RCMP certainly are handling the PR side of this incident better than the Vancouver Airport Tasering affair. To their credit they immediately called in the Abbotsford police force to investigate. Those officers are recommending charges of assault against the police officer and based what I have seen on the video, rightly so. The person was complying with the officers instructions, just not as fast as they would like.
You can bet that at the very least this officers career in BC is done, even if he gets off the charge. He may also be facing a civil suit for damages. You can also bet that this video will be shown to new recruits as a prime example of how NOT to conduct an arrest under these circumstances.
It is interesting to note the officers response to the reporter about the call they had. Seems the information they got was not anywhere close to the truth. The fact that he had just removed a shotgun which was trigger locked should have been a clue that something was not right about the story (Most bad guys don’t trigger lock their guns)
I have to wonder though just how different the RCMP would have acted if they hadn’t been aware of this video, would it have turned into another attempted coverup until the video surfaced?

Over 375 people attended a protest rally outside of the detachment headquarters. I noted that many of them were middle age normal citizens and not your regular protest types. Video and news story of protest here.

Warning there is some blood shown in the video

No comments:

Post a Comment