VPD officer cleared of wrongdoing in incident that injured motorcyclist
A Vancouver police officer has now been cleared of wrongdoing in an incident that left a motorcyclist with a series of injuries last spring.
In his report on the incident, Chief Civilian Director of the Independent Investigations Office of BC (IIO BC) Ron MacDonald said that although the motorcyclist made “a number of serious allegations of physical mistreatment” by police during the incident, “civilian witnesses who had a good opportunity to make observations at the scene did not provide any evidence corroborating those allegations.”
According to the report, the incident took place around 10:30 pm on May 24, 2019, when the VPD officer in question attempted to stop the motorcyclist after observing him speeding on Granville Street, near West 16th Avenue.
The motorcyclist lost control of the bike, and crashed, “suffering a broken bone in his shoulder and other injuries,” the report said.
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In his report, MacDonald wrote that the motorcyclist told investigators that he “did not remember” how he lost control of his motorcycle… but recalled going down onto the pavement on the vehicle, and sliding for several seconds, before colliding with the rear of another vehicle.
The motorcyclist claimed that he knew he had injured his shoulder, and that the VPD officer had “mocked” him for complaining about it during the arrest. The motorcyclist also claimed that the treatment he received at the hospital was inadequate.
And while the IIO “does not have jurisdiction to asses or act on the [motorcyclist’s] further allegations of mistreatment… the allegations of physical abuse [on the part of the officer] are not borne out by the evidence as a whole.”
As a result, MacDonald wrote that he does not consider “that there are reasonable grounds to believe that an officer may have committed an offence under any enactment, and therefore the matter will not be referred to Crown counsel for consideration of charges.”
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