Charges withdrawn against bystander in violent LCBO arrest
Posted April 27, 2016 12:00 pm.
Last Updated April 27, 2016 6:59 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A charge has been withdrawn against a bystander who intervened during a violent arrest at the Sheridan Mall LCBO.
Andrew Burger was initially accused of obstructing police. The charge was dropped on Tuesday.
The arrest was filmed. The video appeared on Facebook in December and shows an officer, with a cut on his head, trying to detain a black man on the ground while exchanging profanity with an unruly crowd around him shouting charges of racism.
The man who was arrested had entered the store and allegedly threw garbage at the officer’s feet. When the officer asked for his ID, “the man allegedly swung his arm, striking the officer’s chest,” Mark Pugash, Director of Corporate Communications at the Toronto Police Service, said in an email last year.
But according to a witness who posted the video to Facebook, the officer was suspicious of every black person entering the store.
“Every black person who walked into the #LCBO at #sheridanmall, the officer would stare at them in an intimidating manner,” he writes. “Nevertheless, a young black guy walked into the liquor store and the officer grabbed him and took him outside the liquor store and told him he wasn’t allowed in the liquor store.”
Marquel Johnson, 25, faces charges of assaulting a peace officer.
Toronto police have not released the name of the officer.
