The B.C. Independent Investigations Office (IIO), a police watchdog agency, has cleared North Cowichan/Duncan RCMP officers of any wrongdoing in the arrest of a man along the Trans-Canada Highway near Duncan on Dec. 3, 2022.
Four officers were investigated for their roles in a physical altercation that took place at a roadside stop with a suspected impaired driver just after 10 p.m. that night. The altercation took two minutes in total, it's estimated, and resulted in physical injury to the suspect.
"He was diagnosed as having suffered fractures to both the radius and ulna of his left arm," wrote Sandra J. Hentzen, interim chief civilian director in her Sept. 18 recap of the evidence. "While at the hospital, he told an escorting officer that four officers had removed him from the vehicle, and the door had closed on his arm while it was trapped in the seatbelt."
The BC IIO was tasked with finding if the officers were at fault but Hentzen said the investigation was hampered by lack of cooperation by both the affected person (AP), and the RCMP.
"This IIO investigation has been adversely impacted by a lack of cooperation on the part of the AP and failures by the involved RCMP officers to abide by their statutory duty to cooperate with IIO investigators," the report said.
"The AP, as a civilian, has no legal or moral duty to assist IIO investigators with their work, and chose not to do so," Hentzen wrote, also explaining what once an officer has been designated as the subject of the investigation it's within their right to provide their written notes or reports.
"In this case, all the involved officers initially refused to provide their written notes or reports to the IIO until they had been formally ‘designated’. That refusal to cooperate caused significant difficulty and delay in the investigation, in circumstances where there was very little evidence other than that of the officers themselves about which police actions had caused the harm under investigation. Eventually, four ‘subject officers’ were identified, and those officers continued to decline to provide any account of their uses of force that may have injured the AP."
The IIO was, however, able to access one of the officer's police reports and interview two witness officers.
Hentzen's investigation concluded the officers' actions did not result in the affected person's physical harm as they were reasonable in carrying out their duties.
"It is unfortunate that the involved officers exhibited such reluctance to account to the IIO for their actions, as the evidence in this case does not raise any suspicion of criminality on their parts. It is clear that police at the check stop were legitimately carrying out their duties under the Motor Vehicle Act in monitoring traffic for potential impaired drivers," she wrote.
"There is no evidence that it was unnecessary or unreasonable for the involved officers to pull him out of the car and take him to the ground so as to place him in handcuffs while under control. It is unfortunate that the mechanics of his removal caused an injury to his arm, but the real cause of that injury was the AP’s continued refusal to cooperate, not any unjustified actions on the part of any police officer."
