Regina Police Chief Evan Bray says he is unable to comment whether or not the actions of an officer making an arrest caught on camera were consistent with police training.
The incident took place on December 13th, where a suspect was tackled in the front yard of a house in the Washington Park neighbourhood and held down by two police officers with another one coming in and kneeing the suspect three times.
Bray said the incident is now considered a public complaint.
“We initiated a public complaint on Monday morning first thing and notified the Public Complaints Commission, so ultimately, the Public Complaints Commission will make direction as to what the investigation looks like, who does it and those types of things.”
Bray said the PCC has yet to inform police whether or not they take over this investigation.
“Sometimes they will determine that they will do the investigation themselves, they have investigators that work for them that can do that,” Bray said. “In other cases they will ask that they investigation be done by another agency or the police agency where it originated and they will provide oversight on that, so I don’t believe we’ve heard yet what route they want to take on it, but ultimately, it will be their decision.”
Bray said there’s always the possibility of injury when a weapon is involved in an arrest.
“Including the suspect whose trying to be arrested,” Bray said. “Officers do a lot of training in that, and I’m not saying that it always goes perfect, and I’m not making a determination one way or the other, I don’t think I can determine by watching that video whether or not the approved or trained techniques were used, that’s something that will come out through the investigation.”
The suspect was taken by an ambulance to hospital after the incident.
