Toronto Star Classroom Connection

Cops’ complaint process is ‘unfair’

Protester wants his allegations re-evaluated after first filing was dismissed by officers’ colleague

JIM RANK IN

A Toronto man who was violently arrested at a protest over police actions during the clearing out of homeless encampments in 2021 is asking for a reinvestigation of his complaint after it was dismissed by a police investigator attached to the same station as the officers who arrested him.

Corey David lodged his complaint through Ontario’s civilian-run Office of the Independent Police Review Director, alleging Toronto Police Service officers used excessive force in arresting him outside of west downtown’s 14 Division, where a crowd of protesters gathered following arrests during the encampment clearing of Lamport Stadium Park.

As is possible under the provincial police complaints system, the investigation was assigned to an officer attached to not only the same police service, but the same police station — the same one outside of which dozens of officers lined up to police the protest.

The 14 Division investigator found David’s allegations that he was not told he was under arrest, was unlawfully arrested and subjected to unnecessary force all to be unsubstantiated.

“We say that’s a blatant breach of procedural fairness,” Vinidhra Vaitheeswaran, David’s lawyer, said after filing a request with the OIPRD for a review of the Toronto police investigation and decision.

It isn’t the only complaint case from the police handling of the encampment clearings being questioned. The Star is aware of several other complaints that were either dismissed or rejected. In one case, the OIPRD has agreed to quash its own decision not to review a complaint about police actions at the encampment and at 14 Division.

“This isn’t just between one individual and one officer, there’s a very public situation, highly reported,” Vaitheeswaran said. “Dozens if not hundreds of officers were involved in some way,” raising “systemic questions” and implicating the “entire police service” around the police response.

“So to refer the investigation to the police service, and essentially have an investigator who was at 14 Division investigate an issue involving all of their colleagues, is very perplexing, and procedurally unfair.”

This summer, protester Connor Engels, with help from lawyer David Shellnutt, filed a successful application for a judicial review of an OIPRD decision to reject his complaint because he was deemed not a direct party to alleged misconduct, despite the fact the system explicitly allows for third-party complaints — and that Engels was personally impacted.

Following a Star story on the rejection, and by consent, the OIPRD was ordered this summer to quash the director’s February 2022 decision, and to either assign a police service or take on the investigation itself into certain “portions” of Engels’ complaint.

The order corrects an error in law Shellnut had pointed out to the OIPRD, but required the filing of an “expensive judicial review” to deal with it, Shellnutt said in an email.

Engels has since met with an investigating officer, who is a Toronto police officer but not attached to 14 Division, Shellnutt said.

In response to questions from the Star, the OIPRD said confidentiality provisions in the Police Services Act prohibit the agency from commenting on specific complaints and the agency won’t comment on ongoing litigation.

Unlike Engels, David, 33, was himself arrested in a violent take-down, held in a cell for hours, charged with obstructing police and then assault, and saw charges against him dropped this past January via a diversion program that involved him making a donation to charity. David, a machinist, does not have a criminal record.

David arrived at 14 Division that evening to join the protest and at some point someone in the crowd bumped into a police bicycle, knocking it and a few more bikes over, David said in a summary of his allegations. Police struck someone and “close shouting” ensued from both sides.

One officer deployed pepper spray and “water and water bottles were thrown by a few people as people backed up from the spray,” David said in the summary.

An officer approached and shoved to the ground a protestor who, according to David’s account, had been “peaceful the entire time.”

That’s when David moved toward the person on the ground and the officer who had shoved the person to the ground “moved towards me … and if I recall correctly, says, ‘Let’s go,’ as he punches me in the face, tears off my mask and along with another officer throws me on top of the police bikes.”

David complained of being struck numerous times in the back with a baton while his legs were being held. “Eventually, I am struck in the head by something at which point I collapse,”

David said in his summary of his allegations.

“I am told I am under arrest and handcuffed, lifted and then put back down before being set on my feet and walked into the police station where I am taken to the cells,” said David, adding he was “shoved into the wall at every doorway despite being compliant.”

The police investigator’s decision to dismiss the complaint was “hard to see and have them justify everything that happened that day to me, and to everybody else outside Lamport and outside 14th Division,” David said in an interview.

“It’s pretty upsetting. I actually couldn’t read through it right away,” said David, who ran for council in this fall’s municipal election, earning 615 votes as a candidate with the Municipal Socialist Alliance.

Vaitheeswaran, David’s lawyer, has asked the OIPRD in writing for a review of the police decision.

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2022-11-26T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-11-26T08:00:00.0000000Z

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