Police not to blame when man in custody severed fingers: SIU
Posted September 1, 2017 6:01 pm.
Last Updated September 12, 2018 11:21 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit says police were not to blame for an accident in which a man in custody severed two of his fingers.
The SIU says officers with the Barrie Police Service tried to prevent the accident, which was caused when the man stuck his hand in the sliding door of his cell to stop it from closing.
The incident on Aug. 1, 2016, began when the 38-year-old man was arrested for public intoxication and brought to the station in Barrie.
The SIU found the man was being belligerent while being booked into custody and resisted being put into a cell at the station.
The unit said he repeatedly shoved his hands into the path of the door as officers were trying to close it.
Although the unit found officers told him repeatedly to step back from the door and managed to remove his right hand from harm’s way, they say two fingers on his left hand were severed. Officers had to bring the man to hospital with a piece of one finger in a bag.
The man underwent surgery for his injuries. The SIU did not provide an update on his current condition.
In a report posted to the Ontario Attorney General’s website, the SIU concluded that the man was arrested on valid grounds and that his injuries were not caused by any unreasonable force by the Barrie police officers.
“With respect to the force used by the officers in their dealings with the complainant, I cannot find that his injuries were caused by any force used by them to attempt to subdue the complainant,” the report reads.
“In fact, from viewing both the booking video and the cell video, officers did no more than push the complainant into his cell, when he refused to co-operate and enter voluntarily. The injury to the complainant’s hand appears to have been an unfortunate accident brought about when the officers were attempting to lodge the complainant in the cell and he continually put his hand in the path of the cell door in order to prevent it closing.”
The report concluded that no charges against Barrie police were warranted in the case.
The SIU is an arms-length agency that investigates incidents involving police in which someone is killed, injured or accused of sexual assault.
