SIU clears Ottawa officer after January 3 stabbing — Ottawa News
Ottawa news: the Special Investigations Unit cleared an Ottawa Police Service officer after a 35-year-old man suffered a self-inflicted knife wound during a January 3 arrest in Ottawa. SIU director Joseph Martino said on May 1 there were no reasonable grounds to believe the unnamed officer committed a criminal offence.
The case began in the early morning of Jan. 3, when Ottawa police got a call from a woman about a family member in mental distress. Police later boxed in the man’s car at Longfields Drive, south of Cambrian Road, at about 12:40 a.m. after he tried to flee.
Martino decision on May 1
Martino wrote that the man said he was infected with spores and fungi and kept a knife that he occasionally held to his neck and abdomen. He said the evidence showed the man was mentally unwell and a clear danger to himself.
In his decision, Martino said officers were within their rights in seeking to take the man into custody under the Mental Health Act. He also wrote, “It was imperative that the (man) be incapacitated as quickly as possible to prevent the knife from being used to inflict grievous bodily harm or death on himself or the officers.”
Longfields Drive arrest
A trained negotiator with the tactical team tried to get the man to drop the knife. Police had put their firearms away after determining he was only a risk to himself, and tactical officers moved in at about 4 a.m. to apprehend him under the Mental Health Act.
Officers smashed the front door windows and discharged conducted energy weapons and pepper spray into the vehicle. The man retrieved the knife and inflicted a stab wound to his abdomen before officers took possession of the knife and removed him from the car.
Ottawa police custody review
Paramedics transported the man to hospital, where he was treated for a four-centimetre self-inflicted laceration. Martino wrote, “In essence, that is essentially what happened; though the man suffered a knife wound, he escaped the incident without lethal injury.”
The ruling closes the police-conduct question raised by the arrest and leaves the arrest itself as the central fact in the record: the man was injured, treated and survived, while the SIU found no basis for criminal charges against the officer involved.
