The Ottawa Police Service has cleared an RCMP officer in Nunavut who struck an Inuk man with the door of his moving truck in June, an incident captured on video that raised concerns at senior levels of the Canadian government about police brutality against Indigenous peoples.
The service said it determined the act was not intentional, explaining its reasoning Tuesday in a news release: “Whereas the vehicle came to a sliding stop on a snow and ice covered track, the driver’s front tire went off the track, the vehicle dipped forward and the opened driver’s door swung forward and struck the community member.”
The Ottawa police force, which investigates major incidents involving Mounties in Nunavut, also said there was no evidence of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle or criminal negligence, and added that the arrest of the Inuk man was lawful.
The incident happened on June 1 as protests were shaking cities across the United States and Canada over the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, in Minneapolis. Thousands of people commented on the video on social media, after it was posted under the heading, “Was that necessary?”
The video from a passerby showed a man lurching and swaying on a slippery road in Kinngait. A truck arrived and, still moving, struck the man and knocked him down. Five RCMP officers were involved in his arrest.
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Benson Cowan, the chief executive of Nunavut’s Legal Services Board, which oversees legal aid, said the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) investigation provided an unsatisfactory explanation of why it determined the collision was unintentional.
“We can see the video for ourselves and tell that there is more going on than is described in the OPS report,” he said in an interview.
“By providing an account that doesn’t accord with what we’re all seeing with our eyes, it just undermines confidence in the administration of justice. That’s a corrosive thing. It plays out all through the justice system, from policing through the courts.”
He also questioned why the OPS found the arrest lawful. No charge was ever laid against the man, and nothing in the video suggests a crime being committed, he said.
“The obligation to provide some information is so overwhelming in that case and the fact they released so little can only serve to feed distrust and confusion in terms of what actually happened.”
Qajaq Robinson, a lawyer representing the man, said she has been unable to reach her client and so cannot comment.
The RCMP in Nunavut also declined to comment, saying it wished to preserve the integrity of its continuing internal investigation into the incident. It said in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail that the officer in question remains on administrative leave while the internal review is being done.
The OPS said the force sent investigators to the territory on June 4. They interviewed 14 civilian and police witnesses, went to the location, examined the police vehicle and watched the video, the news release said.
Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller said at the time that he watched “in disgust” a number of incidents involving police and Indigenous peoples, and said of the incident in question that “a car door is not a proper police tactic. It’s a disgraceful, dehumanizing and violent act.” In other incidents that month involving Indigenous peoples, Chantel Moore and Rodney Levi were killed in separate police shootings in New Brunswick.
Mr. Miller’s office did not respond to a request for comment late Tuesday afternoon.
Jack Harris, the NDP public safety critic, said on Tuesday that regardless of the findings of the OPS “it is incidents like this that demonstrate why the relationship between the RCMP and Indigenous people is one of fear and distrust.”
Jeannie Ehaloak, who was Nunavut’s Minister of Justice, said in a statement at the time that she met with the RCMP’s Chief Superintendent in Nunavut, Amanda Jones, to express her “frustration and outrage,” and said she was concerned by the “unnecessary force, the violence and the lack of respect I have seen” in the video. A spokesman for the current Justice Minister, George Hickes, said he was not ready to comment late Tuesday afternoon.
The man who was struck was taken into custody for public intoxication, the Mounties said at the time, and detained in a police cell in Kinngait, where he was beaten so badly by a fellow inmate that he needed to be flown immediately to Iqaluit for medical care. A separate investigation of those events, and the events in which the man was struck by the RCMP vehicle, is being done by the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP. It has not yet reported.
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