Latest news with #Tasers
Toronto Star
3 days ago
- Toronto Star
Six officers. Repeated Taserings caught on video. Why a judge is calling this man's arrest by Peel police ‘degrading and painful'
Peel Regional Police officers 'brutally' assaulted a man they had no lawful authority to arrest, using Tasers, a baton and pepper spray in a way that was 'demeaning, disproportionate and not justified,' a Brampton judge has found. 'The excessive force the police employed ... was shocking,' Superior Court Justice Faisal Mirza wrote in a 117-page ruling released last week, in which he found the officers, influenced by racism, committed multiple breaches of the Charter in the arrest of a man in a hotel parking lot in Brampton in November 2022.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
13 arrested after tense confrontation between protesters, police on Roebling Bridge
Original coverage: Thirteen people were arrested following a tense confrontation between protesters and officers on the Roebling Suspension Bridge on Thursday, July 17, Covington police said in a news release. Police said officers responded to the bridge between Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky at approximately 8:15 p.m. for a protest that "obstructed traffic and created safety concerns for both demonstrators and the public." The protest was held in support of Imam Ayman Soliman, an Egyptian immigrant and former Cincinnati Children's chaplain who U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained July 9. More: Former Cincinnati Children's chaplain detained by ICE A large group of protesters crossed the Roebling Bridge shortly after 8 p.m., starting from the Cincinnati side and heading toward Covington, according to web camera footage of the bridge. A few minutes later, nine Covington police squad cars drove onto the bridge and confronted the crowd. Videos circulating on social media show officers subduing multiple people to the ground during the protest. One video shows an officer striking a man on the head with his fists and another shows multiple officers taking down a woman while shocking her with a Taser. One person who marched on the bridge, Gracie Shanklin, said she thought the organizers had a permit to march on the roadway. Within seconds of police arriving and ordering the crowd to disperse onto the sidewalks, she realized that was not the case. Shanklin, 23, of Norwood, said she saw Covington officers deploy Tasers on people who were making their way toward the sidewalk. "We were peacefully marching," Shanklin said. "The police started the violence." The protest was organized by Ignite Peace, Ohio Poor People's Campaign and SURJ Cincinnati (Showing Up for Racial Justice), according to a press release. It began by the "Sing the Queen City" sign at The Banks before the crowd moved across the Roebling Bridge around 8 p.m. Covington police said in the release officers initially attempted to connect with the protest's organizer but were "met with open hostility and threatening behavior." "While the department supports the public's right to peaceful assembly and expression, threatening officers and blocking critical infrastructure, such as a major bridge, presents a danger to all involved," the release said. After warnings were issued to the group to disperse, several people were taken into custody. Charges include rioting, unlawful assembly, failure to disperse, obstructing a highway, obstructing emergency responders, criminal mischief, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. A small group of about a dozen protestors later assembled outside the Covington Police Department and Kenton County jail. The groups were mostly quiet, at times chanting for police to drop the charges. Arraignments were scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Friday, July 18 at the Kenton County Justice Center. Among those arrested was CityBeat reporter Madeline Fening, who posted about the protest on her Instagram page Thursday evening. It's unclear what lead to her arrest, but she was charged with failure to disperse, obstructing a highway, obstructing emergency response violations, disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly. The Enquirer has reached out to the publisher and editor-in-chief of CityBeat for more information. 'We respect everyone's right to protest, but when demonstrations jeopardize public safety and violate the law, our officers must take appropriate action,' Police Chief Brian Valenti said in the release. Dozens of officers from agencies across Kenton and Campbell counties responded. By 8:30 p.m., there were 15 squad cars and the crowd had largely dispersed onto the Ohio side of the bridge. Officers cleared the bridge around 8:45 p.m. The bridge was temporarily closed during the incident but has since been reopened. Cincinnati police said they were not involved in the incident, a department spokesman told The Enquirer. Most of the bridge is within Kentucky state lines. This story was updated with new information about the protest's organizers. This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Covington police arrest 13 after protest on Roebling Suspension Bridge
CBC
4 days ago
- CBC
Use of force is up with London police. Here's why they say that's the case
Social Sharing London police officers reported using force on the job 17 per cent more often last year compared to the year prior, according to an annual report shared with the London Police Service (LPS) Board, Wednesday afternoon. The report attributed the increase in use of force reports filed by officers to a rise in the use of conducted energy weapons, more commonly known as Tasers, which the report notes is driven by an effort to train and equip more officers with the devices. As with last year, visible minority groups are over-represented in situations where officers use force, however the report notes there's no evidence of racial disparity in cases where firearms are pointed, drawn or fired, or where Tasers are discharged. "We had 337 use of force reports submitted which were related to 308 distinct occurrences and 448 unique subjects [in 2024]. That would be an increase of 50 reports from 2023 to 2024," said London Police Inspector Angela Johnson, while presenting the report to board members. The report presented by Johnson says 2023 saw 287 use of force reports filed. LPS members are required to file the reports when an officer: Draws a handgun in the presence of a member of the public. Points a firearm at a person. Discharges a firearm. Uses a weapon on another person. Draws and displays a Taser to someone with the intention of achieving compliance Points a Taser at a person Discharges a Taser. Uses force on another person, including through a horse or dog in a way that results in an injury that requires medical care. This is contingent on the officer being aware that the injury required care before going off-duty. Of the incidents in which force was used, the report says, de-escalation was attempted 86 per cent of the time. The rest of the incidents required immediate action. The bulk of the use of force reports filed by officers in 2024 came from situations in which officers pointed firearms at people — a total of 230 times. Still, the most significant year-over-year increase came from Tasers, according to the report. In 2024, Tasers were drawn 100 times, pointed at people or animals 110 times, and discharged 50 times. When an officer fills out a report they can count multiple actions separately, such as drawing, pointing and discharging a Taser or handgun, which explains the large number of reports compared to the total number of incidents. Police attribute the increase, in part, to the push to train and equip more officers with the devices. As the result of a conductive energy weapon expansion program in the police service, 352 officers were qualified to use Tasers in 2024, compared to 242 in 2023. The increase also has to do with the reporting requirements police adhere to, according to LPS Deputy Chief Treena MacSween. She said officers without Tasers more often have to physically restrain suspects, and if no injuries are sustained there is no requirement to report use of force. "If that same situation were to occur and I was trained as a [Taser] operator, I pulled out my [Taser], didn't point it, didn't discharge it, but I displayed it in the presence of a member of the public. If he saw that I had the [Taser] out and ... turns around, puts his hands behind his back, I cuff him ... that would require a use of force report," MacSween explained. MacSween said the LPS plans to continue the expansion of its Taser program, touting the simple presence of one of the devices as an effective de-escalation tool. There was also a marked increase in canine-related use of force, accounting for more than 35 per cent of the total year-over-year increase. That increase is attributed in the report to the canine unit responding to more calls in 2024 than in 2023. Weapons, warrants, intimate partner violence top use-cases The report shows that 41 per cent of cases involved weapons calls, up from 34 per cent in 2023's report. 18 per cent involved the execution of warrants, and 10 per cent involved intimate partner violence. The reasons officers claimed to have used force primarily involved, in descending order -- protecting themselves, protecting the people force was used against, protecting members of the public, and achieving an arrest. Of the 448 unique people identified in use of force reports, police believed 82 per cent of them had possession or access to a weapon at the time force was used. 160 of those instances included the belief the subject had, or was near to, a handgun. One person was killed by police in 2024, according to the report. Last year, police shot and killed an 18-year-old London man, who they say stabbed and killed his then-girlfriend.
Hamilton Spectator
07-07-2025
- Hamilton Spectator
Family rejects SIU report clearing OPP in 2024 killing of Anisininew man
By Jon Thompson 'Hey bro, I'm checking out of here tomorrow. Pissed off. Just let the other bro know,' 57-year-old Bruce Frogg texted his oldest brother Joshua on June 20, 2024 from a halfway house in Kenora. 'I'm just gonna clear it with p.o. [parole officer]. I'm free already. For two weeks already. So I'm packing tonight. I'll let you know tomorrow where I'll be at.' Five days later, Bruce doused the ice cream shop in Anicinabe Park with gasoline and set it on fire while brandishing machetes. A responding OPP officer shot him dead with three bullets from a rifle. 'Something must have transpired,' Joshua said. 'He was on track and all of a sudden… it didn't make sense. It didn't make sense.' All accounts were that Bruce had been sober and getting better in Kenora. The hunter and trapper from the fly-in community of Wawakapewin First Nation, who had spent much of his life in Wapekeka First Nation, was enrolled in programs and finally getting the help he needed. Frogg had struggled with alcohol, agitated by a harrowing childhood of loss, physical and sexual was waiting on word to pick his brother up. On the same day Bruce texted him, he also phoned his daughter Esther in Wunnumin Lake First Nation and told her he was looking forward to coming home and seeing his has been on leave from his job as Wapekeka's band manager for a year since the shooting. One of Bruce's daughters died of overdose, weeks after his death. But as unexpected as Bruce's extra-judicial killing had been and as hard as life has been since, the family was equally shocked when a report from Ontario's Special Investigations Unit director was published this week, clearing the officers involved. Twenty-two minutes passed between noon that day, when Bruce set fire to the building and an adjacent firewood cart 'in a highly agitated state,' and the gunfire that killed him. Water from a firehose struck him indirectly and according to the SIU report, he then 'removed his shirt, walked off the deck down a ramp onto the parking lot. He took three steps in the parking lot in the direction of the firefighters and group of officers including SO #2, when the officer fired three times.' 'I don't know if that was the right call,' the officer said breathing heavily and sitting down in his cruiser, a minute after he shot Bruce. SIU director Joseph Martino found that officer, 'reasonably believed he had no choice but to shoot him,' while he cited concern for Bruce's safety standing near the burning building to clear the negotiator, whose choices, 'did not amount to a marked and substantial departure from a reasonable standard of care in the circumstances.' Martino's report also ruled out non-lethal alternatives. The Emergency Response Team happened to be training elsewhere with the Kenora OPP's non-lethal projectile weapons, the flammable fluid disqualified the use of Conductive Energy Weapons (better known as Tasers), and he agreed with OPP's choice against deploying the police dog, fearing it might chase Bruce back into the fire. The SIU declined an interview for this story. More questions The SIU's Indigenous representative delivered the report to Bruce's family at Nishnawbe Aski Nation's office in Thunder Bay on June 27. Joshua said the representative had no answers beyond the report's contents. 'The justification they had was that he committed arson and he had weapons. That's it,' Joshua said. 'It's beyond my comprehension for that to justify that use of deadly force.' As a hunter familiar with rifle use, Joshua asked, why three shots in the chest and abdomen? How was the officer who shot Bruce justified in feeling threatened when there were four officers with guns trained on him and only one fired? How was anyone threatened when they were standing so far away? How did an armed standoff that Kenora OPP attended only weeks earlier with a man who was armed end without gunfire but this one went differently? Joshua couldn't believe the toxicological report that showed Bruce had used crystal methamphetamine. So far as he knew, Bruce had never done a harder drug than marijuana. And while the officers exercised their right not to speak to SIU, Joshua insisted his brother had a right to life. 'Anytime there's a police shooting, there has to be an inquest. That's the next thing,' he said. 'We need to know why he was shot. They said they'd exhausted all the options. For me, it was a quick projection and he was executed. That's how I feel.' Nishnawbe Aski Nation, the advocacy group representing the chiefs of 49 First Nations in far northern Ontario including Wawakapewin and Wapekeka, issued a press release on Wednesday, rejecting the SIU's findings. 'We are familiar with the SIU investigative process and do not see how this report could properly answer the question of whether an officer made 'the right call.' We do not accept the SIU's explanation of the circumstances that led to this officer taking Bruce's life, and so we reject the conclusion that the officers' actions were reasonable and justified,' the statement from NAN Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler reads. 'We believe the SIU's investigation has raised more questions than answers, and that this process is severely flawed. We are working closely with the family and community to explore other avenues for justice.' Bruce's daughter Esther said NAN's sentiment echoes her family's passion and resolve for justice. 'I want whoever did this thing to be held accountable. This is unfair what happened to him,' Esther said. 'We've agreed unanimously and collectively as a family that we are not going to let this go.' She echoed NAN's frustration that the SIU report failed to take systemic factors into account, including Bruce's history. Young Trauma When Bruce was 5 years old, his oldest brother drowned falling through the ice on a snow machine. He lost another brother to overdose, a third to suicide. He had permanent injuries and skull deformities from the beatings his father laid on him, which he interpreted as the legacy of residential school. He and three other boys would hold sleepovers at each other's homes to stay safe. When they were living in KI, Joshua would show up in Wapakeka bruised and barely walking. In a 2005 interview with this reporter, Bruce said he was sexually abused as a boy by Ralph Rowe, who Wawatay News has called 'Canada's most prolific pedophile.' The Anglican priest and scoutmaster who traveled to fly-in First Nations by float plane in the 1970s and 1980s is believed to have sexually abused as many as 500 boys across northern Ontario and Manitoba. Bruce recalled how every night, Rowe would take a different child into his tent. Adults didn't believe those children who tried to speak up because the accusations were being made against a man of God. By Bruce's count, at least thirteen of his scout troop members took their own lives. From a young age, Bruce showed an uncanny proclivity for hunting, trapping, and tracking. He was widely known as 'the professional' for his bush skills. He became legendary at nine years old for shooting his first moose — an accomplishment not only at his young age, but because he did it with a .22, a calibre of rifle usually reserved for hunting rabbits and other small game. That's how Esther will remember her father: on the land. Despite Bruce having spent the 1980s and early 1990s in and out of jail, and then the mid 2000s onward back and forth on the streets of Thunder Bay to the north, she said he was always there for his family. Her earliest memories involve Bruce taking her out on the land to teach her everything he knew. 'For me personally, he was a loving father. He raised me with strong morals. He raised me to be a strong woman,' she said. 'He was a good person, a loving person, always ready to help, help in any way he can. He was an avid outdoorsman. He loved his land. He loved his people. And that's how I want people to know him.' With notes from The Homelessness Project, a self-published 2007 book by Jon Thompson and photojournalist Jamie Smith about the ecosystem of extreme poverty in Thunder Bay. That book included a profile on Bruce Frogg. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. 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The Irish Sun
07-07-2025
- The Irish Sun
Horror moment brothers ‘brawl with cops in Manchester Airport after one headbutted passenger in Starbucks row'
THIS is the moment two brothers brawled with cops in Manchester Airport after headbutting a passenger in Starbucks, a court heard. Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, 20, and Muhammad Amaad, 26, allegedly lashed out at three officers - leaving one with a broken nose. 7 Footage played to jurors shows the brothers brawling with police 7 Amaaz broke one of the officer's noses, it was said 7 Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, left, and Muhammed Amaad, right, are accused of assault Credit: PA Jurors heard cops had been scrambled to deal with the pair following an Starbucks in the airport. Footage played to the court previously showed Amaaz headbutting passenger Abdulkareem Ismaeil in the cafe and punching him on July 23. Further video played to jurors today showed the alleged "high level of violence" displayed to the police officers. PC Zachary Marsden and PC Ellie Cook - both armed - and PC Lydia Ward, who was unarmed, could be seen approaching the brothers in the car park of Terminal 2. Amaaz resisted as police tried to move him away from a payment machine to arrest him before Amaad intervened. The court heard Amaaz threw ten punches - including one to PC Ward's face that sent her crashing to the ground with blood pouring from her nose. He is also said to have kicked PC Marsden and twice struck firearms officer PC Cook with his elbow. Both Amaaz and PC Marsden then fell to the ground before the officer gets up and appears to "stamp" his foot towards Amaaz's head, it is alleged. Most read in The Sun Junior counsel Adam Birkby said the cop "doesn't appear to connect with Mr Amaaz". As the brawl continues, the police officers get their Tasers out before managing to handcuff the brothers with the help of other cops. Moment man 'headbutted dad at Manchester airport before brawling with cops' At one point, PC Ward could be seen appearing to cry as she holds her nose. The court heard previously that the brothers had gone to meet their mum at the airport on July 23. She had allegedly been involved in some sort of incident Abdulkareem either on their flight or shortly after it. As the brothers passed by the Starbucks, the mum pointed out Abdulkareem to her sons as he sat with his wife and children in the cafe. Prosecutor Paul Greaney KC said: "At just after 8.20pm, the defendants entered Starbucks and confronted Abdulkareem Ismaeil. "During that confrontation, Mohammed Fahir Amaaz delivered a headbutt to the face of Abdulkareem Ismaeil and punched him, then attempted to deliver other blows, all in front of a number of children. "The prosecution case is that this was obviously unlawful conduct." Jurors heard PC Marsden suffered "post-concussion syndrome" and was left with a "severe headache" for three days, dizziness, forgetfulness and bruising and swelling. PC Ward was left with a broken nose and needed surgery under general anaesthetic, it was said. The court was told both Amaaz and Amaad have claimed they acted in self-defence. Amaaz denies assaulting PC Marsden and PC Ward, causing them actual bodily harm. He is also accused of the assault of PC Cook and the earlier assault of Abdulkareem Ismaeil at Starbucks. Amaad has pleaded not guilty to assaulting PC Marsden, causing actual bodily harm. Read more on the Irish Sun The trial continues. 7 Video showed one of the brothers headbutting a passenger before the brawl, a court heard 7 As police came to arrest them, Amaaz allegedly lashed out at cops 7 PC Marsden stamped his foot towards Amaaz's head but did not make contact, it was said 7 The brothers were eventually restrained
