'Disgusting' holiday arrest

Photo: Nicholas Johansen

The hood of a parked car was damaged during the arrest of an intoxicated man Friday night.

A police officer slammed an intoxicated man into the hood of a parked car hard enough to leave a substantial dent Friday night, during an arrest a local pastor called the “most disgusting act of police violence” she has witnessed first hand.

Six police vehicles and an ambulance were needed to arrest the man for "causing a disturbance" in downtown Kelowna during the Canada Day celebrations.

Tracey Weekes, pastor of Living Faith Church in Kelowna, was selling doughnuts on Water Street and Lawrence Avenue Friday night with her daughter and several other teenagers to raise money for a volunteer church trip to Haiti.

While many of the people downtown Friday night were intoxicated, celebrating Canada’s 149th birthday, Weekes had a sober view of the night’s events. 

Just before midnight, Weekes saw a group of people walking east across Water Street towards her.

The group did not have the green light, and was walking in front of traffic, which happened to be a police car. The man at the back of the group appeared to be in no hurry.

“He was taking his time, he was eating,” Weekes said. “The police officer was frustrated, so he pulled over into the oncoming lane, slammed on his brakes, kind of in a rather aggressive and assertive fashion, right in front of us.

“He yelled, ‘Hey you, tough guy’ and the guy didn’t respond … (the officer) said something like ‘Look at me when you’re talked to.’”

Const. Jesse O’Donaghey, media relations with Kelowna RCMP, says the man in question “displayed an inappropriate hand gesture and cursed at the officer” while crossing the road.

While Weekes says the man simply turned to the officer and acknowledged him after finally hearing him, O’Donaghey says the man continued to shout profanities at the officer as he walked away.

The officer got out of his car and approached the man.

“I remember a brown paper bag. I don’t know if (the officer) assumed there was alcohol in it, but he started grabbing at his food to search it, and I remember the young guy saying, ‘Hey what are you doing? It’s my food,’” Weekes said. “He had his mouth full of onion rings, that’s what was in the brown paper bag.”

After the officer told the man he was under arrest, O’Donaghey says the man resisted and pushed the officer away, “causing both to fall to the ground.”

Weekes' story differs. She says the officer grabbed the man and slammed him into the hood of a parked car, leaving the large dent in the car’s hood. 

Later, a witness left a note on the car’s windshield, telling the owner how the damage had been caused.

“The guy started to squirm, and I remember his girlfriend and the group had obviously stopped at this point, and she was shouting at him, ‘Honey don’t fight it, don’t fight it, don’t resist,’ and he was clearly stunned, he didn’t know,” Weekes said. “It was completely unwarranted.”

Weekes says the officer took the man from the hood of the car, onto the pavement, “really hard, his face, his teeth, everything was just shmushed into the ground.”

“He had food in his mouth, and I remember him saying ‘I can’t breathe, I’ve got food in my mouth,’ and the police officer was just yelling at him: ‘shut up!’”

Weekes says a young woman approached the man and the officer and bent down to the man’s face, while he was being arrested.

“She squatted down, and said, ‘Yes, you can breathe, you can do this, just work through it,’” Weekes said. “The police officer just yelled at her, he said: ‘Back off, get back’ and she just stayed there, she didn’t listen.”

At some point, Weekes says the arresting officer called for backup, and five additional police cars, and an ambulance arrived on the scene.

“A group of bystanders and associates of the man surrounded the officer, demanding the officer release the subject,” said O’Donaghey. “A passing crew of (paramedics) stopped to assist the officer with the arrest and crowd control.”

“People definitely weren’t happy," said Tyler Morey, another witness to the arrest. "It was enough for me to stop and watch. It was like, something’s going to happen here, so I stopped and watched the whole thing escalate to the point where it was like, that’s kind of unnecessary. Then all of a sudden, all the cavalry came in, too."

Weekes says the man, handcuffed behind his back, was pulled up from the pavement by his arms, causing him to shout out in pain.

“The girlfriend was just crying, and I just remember standing there with my arm around her telling her it’s going to be OK, ‘You’re going to get through this.’”

Weekes says she approached one of the newly arrived officers and told them she was disgusted with what she had seen.

“He just said: ‘I wasn’t here, I just got here. I saw nothing,’” Weekes said.

Weekes' daughter, who also had front-row seats to the arrest, was upset by the altercation.

“My 17-year-old is just disgusted. We talked about it for about an hour after it happened, and then I came home at three in the morning and talked to my husband about it. I can't even imagine.”

Weekes and her daughter weren’t the only ones who found the arrest to be over the top.

“For one drunk guy, this is a lot of cops to be coming around just to handle the situation, when maybe something else could be happening somewhere else that’s a lot worse,” said Morey. “Meanwhile, there’s fights outside Roses and stuff, and all these cops are over by this one drunk guy.

“It seemed a little extreme for a situation like that.”

The arrest was one of 30 made between 6 p.m. July 1 and 6 a.m. July 2. Twenty-two of the 30 arrests were for intoxication in a public place.

O’Donaghey says the man in question was arrested for causing a disturbance and was later released, once sober, without charge. 

If you have video of the arrest, send your footage to [email protected].