No action will be taken against a Calgary police officer who, according to a police oversight body, acted reasonably during a November 2023 arrest of a woman during a protest.
The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team produced a 19-page report, released on Wednesday, laying out events that transpired during a pro-Palestine protest in downtown Calgary on Nov. 19, 2023.
The protest resulted in four people being charged, and multiple videos were posted online showing some of the confrontations between Calgary police and protesters.
The ASIRT report said that the protest that day was largely without incident until a splinter group staged a “sit-in at a busy intersection.” Those actions brought local traffic along 4 Avenue SE to a standstill.
“Protestors sought to overwhelm police by their sheer numbers, and they refused to follow police direction to clear the intersection. They also became increasingly aggressive towards police officers who tried to get them to move on,” the report read.
“Officers would have been well within their authority to arrest any one of those protestors, including the (affected person) for mischief.”
Allegations of excessive use of force against a woman, which initially were alleged to have included the grabbing and removal of a hijab during a physical altercation, were reported and investigated by ASIRT.
They interviewed the woman, and she described the situation to investigators, the report read.
ASIRT, after comparing the woman’s account of events to that of body-worn cameras and other videos of the event, said her story wasn’t accurate. She had recalled hitting her head and being pulled to the ground by her hijab.
“The videos confirmed that the AP was pulled away from the vehicle, onto her buttocks, at the time of her initial arrest. She did not appear to land with any remarkable degree of force,” the ASIRT report read.
“She was also not pulled to the ground by her hijab, and it was noted to still be properly affixed to her head when she landed on the ground. It was the AP’s continued efforts to resist arrest and to pull away from (witness officer 1 – WO1) that resulted in her hijab being displaced and to her being knocked down into the vehicle where she struck her head. There is no evidence to support that WO1 deliberately pushed the AP’s head into the vehicle or purposefully tried to displace her hijab.”
ASIRT said that the amount of force used by the officer during the woman’s arrest was minimal, and that the actions were recognized as basic techniques to maintain physical control of a detained person.
“The use of force by WO1, and other officers assisting with the AP’s arrest, were proportionate, necessary, and reasonable,” the ASIRT report read.
“As a result, there are no reasonable grounds to believe that an offence was committed.”
