Winnipeg police beating caught on video
Written on January 29, 2010
Yesterday, a video was presented in court showing Winnipeg police officers beating a man in a parking lot in downtown Winnipeg almost a year ago. CBC says the video shows four officers pinning the man to the ground, while others kick, knee, and punch him, as well as taser him twice. The police earlier claimed the man had resisted arrest, but there was no evidence of this in the video.
His lawyer, Dan Manning, is quoted as saying that when he saw him the next morning, “I honestly did not recognize him. His face was swollen to twice its normal size. His eyes were black. There was blood around his face — dried blood.”
One of the officers involved is Ryan Law, Police Chief Keith McCaskill’s nephew, who is already facing a lawsuit around a separate incident where a man in custody ended up bleeding from his mouth, nose, and rectum, and required treatment for a ruptured colon.
This recording is yet another demonstration of the importance of the right to observe and record police interactions, a right that Chief McCaskill has refused to acknowledge, and that Winnipeg Police Service officers have repeatedly violated. Winnipeg Copwatch will continue to fight for people’s right to observe and record the police, and for police accountability.
This incident is also representative of a pattern Winnipeg Copwatch has observed in violent arrests. Whenever a violent arrest is made, there will almost certainly be accusations or charges laid for resisting arrest or assaulting the police. Often, evidence surfaces showing no resistance on the part of the person being arrested. We can only understand this to show that police use the charges and accusations to justify the violence of their arrests, and to tie people up defending themselves against criminal charges instead of pursuing the police for their abuse.
Filed in: News.