Video shows Toronto police swarming man during trespassing arrest | CBC News

Toronto police officers swarmed, kicked, punched and elbowed a man while arresting him for allegedly trespassing downtown on Tuesday, video obtained by CBC Toronto shows.

At first, the video shows two police officers struggling to subdue a man in an alley. One officer elbows the man in the back repeatedly, while the other can be seen holding him from behind.

Another officer comes into frame and punches the man in the chest and back. More officers can be seen arriving, swarming the man as the camera captures him being taken to the ground, kicked and handcuffed.

By the end of the video, more than a dozen officers are visible on the scene.

“It seemed so excessive,” said Star Spider, the bystander who captured the video near Isabella and Church streets. 

Spider told CBC Toronto she’s considering filing an official complaint with the Law Enforcement Complaints Agency, formerly the OIPRD — though experts are divided about whether the interaction constitutes police brutality, and Toronto police say the man was physically resisting arrest and uninjured.

Police say man was resisting arrest

Spider says she was grabbing a Bike Share ride across the street Tuesday afternoon, when she saw two police officers interacting with a man who was calling for help and started filming.

Throughout the video, the man pleads for help as the voices of bystanders are heard off-screen asking police what’s happening and pleading for them to ease up on the man.

“I was using lots of expletives because I couldn’t really believe what I was seeing,” Spider said in an interview Wednesday.

After the arrest, Spider said she could see blood coming from the man’s head. Police later said in an email the man was not seriously injured and required no medical attention.

Police were responding to multiple complaints of trespassing from property management of a building near the corner of Isabella and Church streets, Toronto police spokesperson Stephanie Sayer said in an email. 

Officers were trying to remove the accused from the property and arrest him, she said. When the man physically resisted, the officers requested assistance, she said. 

There was a high police presence in the area, Sayer said. So several officers responded to the call in a short time, until over a dozen officers were on scene.

“When an officer broadcasts ‘officer needs assistance,’ nearby officers respond quickly, as they have no other information other than the officer needs help,” she said.

The man has been charged with trespassing, resisting a peace officer and assault with intent to resist arrest. 

Arrest ‘consistent with training,’ says expert

Although Spider and other bystanders were upset by the arrest, the large police presence and use of force — including kicks, punches and jabs — doesn’t necessarily constitute police brutality, says one retired Toronto police staff sergeant.

“That is consistent with police training, if you are lawfully trying to make an arrest,” said Steve Summerville, who used to teach use of force at the Ontario Police College.

The civilian video only offers a snapshot of the incident, he says, and the physicality and large police presence may have been justified by circumstances not captured on video.

“If the citizen is resisting that arrest, if the level of resistance is such that you require backup or assistance, that certainly would be within the areas of appropriate numbers and appropriate techniques,” he said.

Body-cam footage to be reviewed

Alok Mukherjee, former chair of the Toronto Police Services Board, says he has trouble seeing how the force captured on video could be defended. 

“It was extremely disturbing and it disgusted me,” Mukherjee said.

He says the incident should be investigated, and police need to demonstrate that circumstances required that kind of response.

“If the police have that from their body-worn cameras, let them bring it out, let them justify by showing their evidence,” he said. “They never do that.”

Police spokesperson Sayer says body-worn camera footage will be reviewed, as per police procedures, and “any necessary follow-up regarding officer training or conduct will be addressed.” 

Mukherjee says Toronto police are unlikely to hold themselves accountable, based on their track record, and he wants the Toronto Police Services Board to act. 

“The board has to wake up and say this has been happening again and again and again,” he said. “What is the message we are giving to the public?”

In a statement from the Toronto Police Services Board, senior advisor Sandy Murray said the board cannot review Spider’s video or make decisions “with respect to specific investigations, the conduct of specific operations, the discipline of specific police officers, and the day-to-day operations of the police service.”