|
Tom
Engel
| Edmonton
police
| Kerry
Diotte
Jeffrey Pringle
Police cited for 'gross
abuse' of detainee
Suspected
impaired driver strip-searched to 'teach him a lesson'
Allan Chambers, The
Edmonton Journal, Thursday, February 27, 2003
EDMONTON - Edmonton police
grossly violated the charter rights of a suspected drunk driver
by detaining and strip-searching him to "teach him a lesson,"
a provincial court judge has ruled.
"It was a gross abuse
of the power of detention," Judge Allan Lefever said in
a strongly-worded judgment in which he dismissed two charges
against Jeffrey Donald Pringle for lack of evidence, including
a charge of assaulting a police officer.
The judge also threw out two
other charges because police violated the Charter of Rights and
Freedoms.
A police spokesman declined
comment until the ruling is studied by the department's lawyers.
Pringle and his lawyer, Tom
Engel, were unavailable Wednesday for comment.
In his ruling, Lefever accepted
arguments by Pringle that the police violated sections of the
Charter dealing with arbitrary detention and probable grounds
for conducting a search. The violations were serious enough to
justify dismissing the charges, Lefever ruled.
The events that led to the
ruling occurred early on the morning of Feb. 4, 2001.
According to evidence set out
in the ruling, police officers followed a car driven by Pringle.
They arrested him and a fellow passenger and took them to the
Old Strathcona police station after their car became stuck, and
it appeared they had been drinking.
Lefever found that Pringle
wasn't a model prisoner. Police notes on his behaviour depicted
him as "a very angry, young man."
He was handcuffed on two occasions
for kicking the metal door of a room where he was being held
between attempts to call a lawyer, after police asked him to
supply breath samples.
The decision to detain and
strip-search Pringle was made after he allegedly struck one officer.
Lefever said, however, that the evidence of several officers
in the vicinity of the incident was too conflicting to permit
a conclusion.
Some of the police evidence,
including one instance in which an officer used whiteout to alter
his written report, led to basic questions about the credibility
of some of the police evidence, he wrote.
He noted police had already
called Pringle's mother, who came to the station and told officers
her son was upset by a friend's death.
Rather than turn him over to
his mother, however, police decided to keep him in custody for
a judicial hearing on his release. The decision, Lefever wrote,
resulted in a trip to the downtown police station and a strip-search
required under police procedures. The requirement to appear before
a justice of the peace resulted in a detention lasting another
eight hours.
The only reason for detaining
Pringle, Lefever said, was to teach him a lesson for allegedly
striking a police officer.
The decision was "cavalier"
with respect to Pringle's mother, Sharon, and was "consistent
with a decision to make an example of Pringle."
"In my view," Lefever
wrote, "the decision to not release Pringle to his mother
... was punitive and intended to show Pringle who had more power
in the situation."
He cited other court rulings
that unjustified strip searches are inherently humiliating and
degrading. "It is my opinion that the decision to send Pringle
to the detention unit was done for the purpose of punishing and
humiliating Pringle," he wrote.
" . . . The decision was
high-handed and without lawful justification. It was a gross
abuse of the police power of detention."
While the Crown supplied enough
evidence to prove the charges of failing to stop his car for
a police officer and failing to provide a breath sample, the
violation of Pringle's Charter rights was serious enough to justify
a dismissal of the charges, Lefever wrote.
achambers@thejournal.canwest.com
© Copyright 2003 Edmonton Journal
|
Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
