EDMONTON — A settlement has been reached between the Edmonton police force and a woman who was handcuffed and hurt during a potential riot following a June 2006 NHL Edmonton Oilers playoff game.
Kristin Wilson has dropped her civil suit in exchange for an undisclosed amount of money.
Newspaper photographers captured images of a police officer hitting the handcuffed woman and throwing her to the ground when she stepped off the curb after police warned revellers to stay on the sidewalk.
Const. Shane Connor, 28, had earlier been cleared of using excessive force by a disciplinary hearing.
He had faced charges of discreditable conduct for striking Wilson and for swearing at her.
Ian Atkins, assistant commissioner of RCMP in Nova Scotia, ruled that Wilson, who now lives in Kelowna, B.C., was drunk and unruly as she was being arrested.
Wilson has said she woke up on a bus with blood pouring from her mouth.
At the time, previous post-game mayhem had led police to take a zero-tolerance approach to disorder, particularly any moves to crowd the streets around Edmonton’s busy Whyte Avenue.
Atkins ruled that the measures used by Connor to subdue Wilson were within Edmonton police training policies.
Officers were called in to patrol Whyte Avenue on game nights during the playoffs that spring — on some nights, as many as 30,000 excited fans poured onto the street, many of them drunk and ready to cause trouble.
Connor testified in January that he feared for his own safety.