SIU clears Ottawa officers after man falls from garage rail

Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit found no reasonable grounds to believe two Ottawa Police Service officers committed a criminal offence after a 32-year-old man was seriously injured in a fall from a parking garage railing during a foot chase on May 23, SIU Director Joseph Martino said in a report dated Oct. 19.

The man suffered a brain bleed and a skull fracture when he fell from a third-floor railing onto the sidewalk below, according to the SIU’s news release. The SIU, a civilian agency that investigates serious injuries and deaths involving police, closed the file without charges.

The director’s report says Ottawa police received a 911 call at 3:20 a.m. reporting a break and enter at a bar in the area of York Street and Sussex Drive. Two officers were dispatched at 3:24 a.m. and arrived three minutes later. The report says a third officer told them to search the adjoining parking garage.

Parking garage video shows the man walking inside the garage at 3:28 a.m. when the two officers approached. He ran toward a railing, climbed over it and disappeared from view, the report says. It says he hung on the other side for a moment before falling and landing on his head. The officers reached the railing shortly before he fell.

Martino wrote that the officers were within their rights to pursue the man to arrest him for break and enter. He said the officers “comported themselves with due care and regard for the Complainant’s wellbeing during their brief, seconds-long engagement.”

“They could not have anticipated that he would shortly imperil his life by climbing over a third-floor railing that dropped to a sidewalk below,” Martino wrote. He said that as soon as it became apparent the man was in danger, the officers gave thought to how they could help him as he hung from the railing, but he fell before they could act.

The offence the director considered was criminal negligence causing bodily harm under section 221 of the Criminal Code. The report says the offence is reserved for serious cases that show wanton or reckless disregard for the lives or safety of others, and that the evidence did not show either officer went beyond the limits of care set by the criminal law.

Both officers declined to be interviewed by the SIU, which is their legal right, but they released their notes and written statements. Two other officers, the bar manager and the injured man were interviewed, and investigators reviewed video from the garage and from a nearby store.

The report also says the investigation was delayed because of resource pressures affecting the SIU’s video enhancement capacity. The decision came nearly five months after the incident.

Under Ontario law, the SIU withholds the names of the officers and civilians involved. The SIU director can lay charges only when there are reasonable grounds to believe an offence was committed, and otherwise the file is closed and a public report is released.

The Ottawa decision is one of several the unit released this month. It cleared a Hamilton officer after a man was injured in an arrest, found an OPP officer largely at fault in a Toronto crash and cleared Niagara police in a fatal shooting in Welland.

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