Two Vernon Mounties will not have charges brought against them following a forcible arrest that led to a man being injured in 2021. 

The incident was investigated by the Independent Investigations Office of BC (IIO), which announced on Dec. 19 that the available evidence did not meet the standard for charges to be laid.

According to the decision, a man encountered members of the Vernon RCMP when he went to the Vernon Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) on June 30, 2021. Shortly before, the man's brother had driven to the MCFD office with his two small children for an appointment. The MCFD social workers were aware that the brother had a Canada-wide driving prohibition and wouldn't let him drive away with his children in the vehicle, so he called his brother, the man in question, to give them a ride home. 

The police were called to the scene regarding the driving offence. 

The two police officers who were the subjects in the investigation arrived on scene and ultimately arrested the man using force. The man suffered five broken ribs, abrasions to his right shoulder, back, wrist, knee and above his eye, and a cut on his toe. 

The decision states that the man at one point slammed his car door on one of the subject officers, striking him in the torso. The officer grabbed the man from inside the SUV but then retreated after the man grabbed something. The man told investigators that he had turned on his phone and started recording the officer, who responded by taking his phone away. 

Social workers stated that the man was yelling and swearing at the officer, who remained calm and collected. 

A witness officer observed the man strike the subject officer on the chest with his right arm while he was still in the vehicle and then heard the subject officer arrest the man for assault of a police officer. The subject officer asked the man to exit the vehicle but he refused. 

The social workers at the scene observed the man reach towards the waist area of a police officer, with one believing he was reaching for the officer's gun belt. The three social workers quickly removed the children from the man's vehicle. 

The man was later physically removed from the SUV by both subject officers and taken to the ground. Video evidence did not capture what happened once the man was on the ground. 

The man told investigators that he was slammed down onto the pavement and that an officer stomped on his toe and kicked the back of his right shoulder. He said one of the subject officers jumped on top of him and punched him behind the ears and back of his head 15 to 20 times before he was handcuffed. He described being pressed up against the SUV window before being taken back to the police station, where he was given his phone back and released from custody without charges. 

Witnesses said they observed the officers strike the man "at least three times" in the head but could not identify which officer delivered the strikes. 

The man said he never struck or attempted to strike one of the subject officers or any other police officer, and that apart from refusing to exit the vehicle, he hadn't resisted arrest. He claimed the video he recorded of the subject officers was deleted by police, however, he declined a request by the IIO investigators to analyze his phone and retrieve any deleted footage. 

The social workers' evidence was that the police officers were calm and attempting to de-escalate the situation while the man was in the SUV and that the situation escalated when he refused to leave the vehicle, resulting in police forcibly removing him. 

In its decision, the IIO acknowledged that the subject officers' actions and the man's resulting injuries would amount to assault causing bodily harm in other circumstances, however, it said the subject officers are "entitled to rely upon section 25 of the Criminal Code as a defence to applying force on the (man)," meaning they were permitted by law to use force in the arrest. 

"At a trial, the Crown would be required to disprove to the criminal standard that the force used in striking the (man) was reasonable, necessary, or proportionate. Police are trained that distraction strikes are a tactic at the lower end of the use of force continuum that may be used to arrest a resisting person," the decision reads. 

"The (man's) injury in the head area is limited to an abrasion above his right eye. The evidence does not establish a substantial likelihood that the Crown could prove at a trial that the strikes were contrary to police training."

The IIO characterized the man's evidence as "unreliable," saying his allegations that police deployed pepper spray into the man's vehicle while the children were present was false as the children had been removed from the vehicle by the social workers before police used pepper spray while attempting to remove the man from the vehicle and arresting him. The man's claims that he didn't attempt to strike an officer or resist arrest and that the officers struck him more than three times, were also discredited by the IIO.

"While his recollection of events may be honest, these discrepancies negatively impact the reliability of his evidence about the force used after he was on the ground," the IIO stated.

The IIO also concluded that charges of assault with a weapon and unlawful detention would not lead to a conviction at trial.