Police watchdog rules no charges for officer in the deletion of video evidence
Posted Jul 7, 2016 02:36:44 PM.
Last Updated Jul 7, 2016 02:43:00 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
HALIFAX – The province’s police watchdog found no grounds to support obstruction of justice charges against a police officer that had a hand in the deletion a video following the arrest of a 17-year-old in Dartmouth of June last year.
According to the Ron MacDonald, Director of the Serious Incident Response Team (SIRT), a video recorded by a second youth present at the arrest was deleted by the officer, which prompted the investigation after the youth being arrested complained in November 2015.
MacDonald’s report finds police were called to the facility on June 30, 2015, because the 17 year-old was in breach of court conditions and had caused damage to the center.
He explains that the video was taken by a second male youth that was initially in the room when the arrest occurred, but left and then recorded the encounter through a window.
The video was deleted following the arrest, according to MacDonald, after the male who filmed it protested the actions of police and met with one officer in the presence of a staff person. There is confusion as to who deleted the video, whether it was the male who was concerned his phone would then be taken into evidence, or if the officer deleted since he believed the video was not relevant.
There was a struggle involved in the arrest, according to MacDonald, but the report found the evidence supports that the video likely started after the struggle began and was not deleted for the specific purpose of obstructing justice.
“We accept that the officer says, that he didn’t think there was anything relevant in the video,” says MacDonald, ” in the real world, every piece of evidence is relevant but one can understand perhaps why the officer didn’t think it was relevant.
MacDonald says SIRT understood why the officer would think the video was not relevant, but that the team did acknowledge that every piece of evidence can be relevant.
“To have a charge of obstruction of justice, you have to show that the person has a specific intent to hinder an investigation and in this case he didn’t,” he explains. “He didn’t think there was anything relevant in that video.”
The officer now understands that he should have taken the video into evidence, according to MacDonald, and was not reprimanded in any way.
