There are no reasonable grounds to believe that a Maskwacis RCMP officer's actions during a 2021 arrest amounted to a criminal offence, says an investigation into the incident.
RCMP were texted on Feb. 1, 2021 that armed people were at a residence and they needed to hurry.
Two officers arrived in a police truck and as they were pulling into the driveway a car was coming out. It stopped about a car's length away, said a report from Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT), which was called in on Feb. 21, 2021 to look into the incident.
Officers ordered the occupants to get out and lay on the ground. The driver got out and did that right away, but a front seat passenger and three people who got out of the rear of the vehicle did not comply right away.
One of them was fumbling with a black toque before eventually going to his knees and putting the hat on. The officer then kicked or pushed the man to the ground with his foot and then hit him with the hand he was holding his handgun in.
The investigation was to determine if the amount of force was justified. If the man was kicked to the ground and hit with the handgun those uses of force could be considered unjustified, says the ASIRT report released on Thursday.
The officer told the investigator the man would not lie on the ground and kept raising and lowering his hands and turned his back to the officer.
"He was concerned that the AP (Affected Person) was reaching for a weapon, and he feared that the AP may cause him or his partner grievous bodily harm or death, so he ran up and kicked the AP in the back to the ground.
"He said that the kick was more of a push with his foot."
He got on top of the man and while holding his handgun pointed it away and took his finger off the trigger and hit the man with the palm of his hand twice when he refused to show his hands.
The man told the investigator he was pushed to the ground by the police officer and no other force was used.
He was handcuffed and arrested. A search of the vehicle turned up a bag of methamphetamine on the front seat, and in the back seat, two prohibited firearms, ammunition, multiple knives, a baton, a Taser-like weapon, brass knuckles and bear spray.
The man pleaded guilty in October 2021 to unauthorized possession of a firearm in a motor vehicle and unauthorized possession of a firearm and was sentenced to a year in prison.
The incident was partly captured on video from the police vehicle but most of the action was out of frame.
Police officers were responding to a high-risk situation and facing a person who was not obeying instructions, concludes the investigator.
"Based on the limited information available, these were justified uses of force. There are therefore no reasonable grounds to believe the SO (Subject Officer) committed a criminal offence."
