The use of physical force on a disabled man at the Red Deer Courthouse might concern all of us.
Bill Berry wasn’t forcibly grabbed by just anyone.
A cancer survivor, he’s deaf and unable to speak. He has no voice box due to surgery and must breathe through a tube in his neck. He has a feeding tube through his nose. You cannot mistake the fact he has serious medical issues when you see him.
On Dec. 9, Berry went to the courthouse to pay a parking ticket. Berry, 52, made the mistake of entering through the wrong door. It was a simple mistake anyone could have made. It nearly cost him his life.
As someone left the courthouse via an exit door, the door remained momentarily open. Berry was arriving to pay a ticket. The exit door was still open. He went through it.
When a sheriff approached Berry at the counter to tell him to go through the security screening entrance instead, Berry gestured to indicate he couldn’t speak or hear. Suddenly, and all too quickly, the sheriff used physical force on Berry, who had done nothing illegal.
That sheriff, Thomas Bounds, grabbed Berry, put him in a “bear hug, and carried him from the counter area to an exit door where he collapsed.” He collapsed because he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe because his stoma tube had been dislodged when he was grabbed. He convulsed. He could have died.
The intent apparently was to force Berry to leave and go through the door that contains security screening.
Other responding sheriffs reinserted his tube and he recovered quickly. Berry did decline emergency medical services that had been called. Later that day, he did go to hospital to be checked out.
All the sheriffs involved are in the Court and Prisoner Transport Section.
Despite his handicaps, Berry has been “loudly” raising his concerns that he was treated inappropriately. After the incident, he raised hell — with the Solicitor General Department and the media, and continues to do so. Berry does not believe he’s seen justice. He wants charges laid.
The Solicitor General Office’s Law Enforcement and Oversight Branch investigated the incident. The department had the benefit of crucial surveillance video and concluded recently that Bounds did not explain to Berry he had come in the wrong door. That would have allowed Berry to leave and come back through security. It also found the level of force used by Bounds was unjustified and excessive.
Bounds told investigators that Berry’s coming in the wrong door, failure to follow verbal direction, and aggressive physical response represented a potentially dangerous risk at the courthouse.
But the video shows that Berry was neither assaultive nor aggressive.
Berry has received an apology from the department, and Bounds no longer works for the provincial government. But the department isn’t forthcoming about the details. It’s unknown whether Bounds left the job on his own or otherwise.
That’s important information. Berry and the public should know whether the department took action to send a message that the officer’s behaviour was unacceptable.
Further to this, an RCMP investigation did not recommend charges be laid. The problem here, as it is in so many similar incidents where officers go astray, is the close links between two policing forces.
An independent body should be deciding whether charges are warranted. And if there were to be charges, not only would Berry have his day in court, so would the officer involved.
If Berry had attacked the sheriff in the same manner, are we to believe there would have been no charges?
We do know that the department intends to use the video from the incident for new sheriff training purposes.
Which begs the question: How well trained are Alberta courthouse sheriffs?
And while we’re asking questions, how is it that someone can enter the wrong door at the courthouse in the first place?
Mary-Ann Barr is the Advocate’s assistant city editor. She can be reached by email at barr@www.reddeeradvocate.com, by phone at 403-314-4332, and on Twitter @maryannbarr1.