CORNWALL, Ontario – Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) has declined to lay charges against a Cornwall Police Service (CPS) officer after a 23-year-old man suffered a broken jaw and lost two teeth during the course of an arrest.
According to the SIU report, the CPS received a call at 3:43 a.m. on July 4 of a mental health call outside of a Bedford St. residence. The 23-year-old man’s roommate had called the CPS claiming that the man was in distress.
Upon their arrival, the man approached two officers despite being told to stop. One CPS officer struck the man with his Conducted Energy Weapon (CEW), more commonly known as a taser.
Upon being struck by the CPS officer’s CEW, the man fell forward and his head struck the pavement which caused him to knockout two teeth.
The man was transported to the Cornwall Community Hospital (CCH) for treatment and CPS notified SIU of the incident at 5:09 a.m.
Later in the day, when the extent of the man’s injuries was fully known he was transported to the Ottawa hospital and CPS updated the SIU that the man had fractured his jaw as well.
“While Director Martino accepted that the man’s serious injuries were incurred when he fell forward having been immobilized by the CEW discharge, he found no reasonable grounds to believe those injuries were the result of unlawful force by the subject official,” reads the report from SIU Director Joseph Martino. “Accordingly, there is no basis for proceeding with criminal charges in this case, and the file has been closed.”
The SIU is an independent oversight body that investigates any interactions between an Ontario police service and a member of the public where a death, injury or allegations of sexual assault have occurred.
