Police responded after video of the incident was posted on social media on Friday. The video was posted by the leader of Bear Clan Patrol: Beaver Hills House, Judith Gale. Gale said the video was shot around 4 p.m. Thursday at the corner of 106th Avenue and 100th Street not far from Mission Hope in downtown Edmonton. He said the video was taken by a person who is homeless and was too scared to share the video and asked for Gale’s help in distributing the video. The 13-second video shows a woman getting out of the back of an Edmonton Police Service vehicle while an officer walks quickly behind her. As the woman starts to turn towards him, he shoves her roughly. He hits the pavement and rolls to the ground. As she moves to get up, the officer grabs her arms, forcing her to fall back as he handcuffs her. A second officer appears on screen as the video ends. In a statement Friday afternoon, EPS spokeswoman Cheryl Voordenhout said the video captured police responding to a gun complaint in the area of 100th Street and 106th Avenue shortly after 4 p.m. Thursday. He said the officer was interrupted by someone who reported that two women, one of whom was armed, were preparing to fight. Voordenhout said the officer found the women and saw that one had a knife. She said the officer ordered her to drop it, but she refused and instead expressed her affiliation with a criminal gang and left. “The officer considered his use of force options given that the suspect was armed and decided that pushing her to the ground would require the least amount of force to allow him to safely take the suspect into custody. This can be seen in the video.” Voordenhout said. He added that the woman was not injured and that she was arrested for possession of a dangerous weapon. Voordenhout said the events were captured on surveillance video that corroborates the officer’s account. “After reviewing the incident, there are currently no grounds for an investigation by the EPS Professional Standards Branch,” he said. Bear Clan Patrol Leader Judith Gale said the woman seen being pushed to the ground by police in the video shared online is out on bond. (Paige Parsons/CBC) In an interview before Edmonton police released their explanation for the use of force, Gale said she found the incident infuriating. “To violently attack her like that was just unconscionable. And no human being should ever be subjected to that kind of violence, especially by EPS,” Gale said in an interview Friday. Gale said he knows the woman and said she is homeless. Bear Clan Patrol Beaver Hills House is the Edmonton chapter of a national organization that supports people who are homeless by distributing food, water and tents for rough sleepers.
Experts disagree on the use of force
University of Alberta criminology professor Temitope Oriola said he finds the use of violence depicted in the video disturbing. “This use of force did not seem reasonable or necessary under the circumstances,” Oriola said. He said that while there are times when the use of force is justified, it did not appear that the officer was in imminent danger or that the level of force was justified given the woman’s relatively small stature. He said a few extra minutes of verbal engagement with the woman would have helped and that the rush points to a problem with the way police are trained. But Doug King, a professor of justice at Mount Royal University, said the officer’s actions were perfectly reasonable. Because violence has been threatened, letting the woman go was not an option, King said. He said the officer made a good choice by choosing physical force instead of deploying a Taser or drawing his gun on the woman in an attempt to stop her. “I don’t see anything wrong with what the officer did,” King said. King said even if Edmonton police had referred the case to Alberta’s Serious Incident Response Team, it’s unlikely the organization, which investigates serious incidents with police in the province, would agree to take it on, adding that similar incidents do happen on a “fairly regular basis.”
