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 A screen grab from a security camera video show officers kneeing and punching Bousquet. |
WINNIPEG - Police officers say Cody Bousquet was resisting arrest when they administered several punishing body blows to “lessen his resistance and gain compliance.”
A security video documenting the arrest paints a very different picture.
Last February, Bousquet led police on a high-speed chase in a stolen truck, ending in the compound of a Notre Dame Avenue auto parts business. Security video shows Bousquet beginning to surrender himself when an officer shoves him to the ground.
Four officers restrain Bousquet — who does not appear to be moving — and knee and punch him several times in the face and body. He is then shocked twice with a Taser.
Bousquet pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, assaulting a police officer and other charges and was sentenced Thursday to 11 months time served.
Crown attorney Mick Makar said Bousquet would have been looking at a penitentiary sentence, were it not for the damning evidence of the security video. Makar appeared to blame the officers’ actions on adrenaline.
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“The whole incident is only a matter of minutes,” Makar said. “So you can imagine everyone’s hearts were racing at the time.”
Judge Ray Wyant said he didn’t see “any evidence of overt resistance.” Wyant said there was no excuse for the degree of force seen on the video.
“There are some people who would look at that video and say ‘What’s the big deal, he got what he deserved?’” Wyant said. “No amount of excessive force would ever be condoned by this court, no matter what the circumstances.”
Court heard police spotted Bousquet in a stolen Ford F150, waiting at a red light at the intersection of Portage Avenue and Smith Street. When officers ordered him out of the truck, Bousquet hit the gas, rammed the cruiser and raced away.
Bousquet collided with another vehicle, knocked over a light standard and sent several pedestrians scrambling for safety before the chase ended at the auto parts compound.
According to the notes of one of the officers, Const. Ryan Law, police “issued clear verbal demands for the accused to get on the ground, but Bousquet refused to obey.”
Law said officers took Bousquet to the ground and he “immediately resisted officers and flailed around.”
Bousquet, who was highly intoxicated, “struggled considerably with the officers who were unable to gain control of his arms which he continually swung at police and tried to shove into his waistband.”
Law said Bousquet became more aggressive, forcing Law and another officer to deliver several “knee strikes” and elbows “to lessen his resistance and gain compliance.”
“This, I assume, was written before the video came to light,” said defence lawyer Dan Manning, who called the video “shocking.”
This isn’t the first time Law’s name has been connected to an allegation of excessive force. Law, the nephew of Chief Keith McCaskill, was charged with aggravated assault last year after a man accused him of kicking him in the stomach while he lay in a holding cell. That matter is still before the court.
dean.pritchard@sunmedia.ca