The Special Investigations Unit has cleared Greater Sudbury police of sexual assault allegations and injuring a man following an Oct. 2, 2022, arrest.
“There are no reasonable grounds to believe that the (supervising officer) comported himself other than lawfully in his dealings with the complainant,” according to the SIU report. “There is no basis for proceeding with criminal charges in this case. The file is closed.”
The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) is a civil law enforcement agency that investigates incidents involving an officer where there has been a death, serious injury, the discharge of a firearm at a person or an alleged sexual assault.
In this case, the complainant alleged he was sexually assaulted and that police officers injured his hand.
The SIU report concluded that the injury to the 23-year-old man’s hand predated his interaction with police, and that police were justified in strip-searching him.
The series of events started at 12:26 a.m., when a police officer alerted the dispatcher of a vehicle stop at Grandview Boulevard and Rideau Street in Sudbury. A few minutes later, the officer alerted the dispatcher that the suspect had been brought in custody.
The suspect was arrested for numerous outstanding warrants, according to the SIU report, and was brought to GSPS headquarters and locked in a cell to be remanded in the morning.
At 10 a.m., police report seeing the man with a ball of white substance in his hand, and was making attempts to conceal it in his anal region.
Approached by cell staff, he flushed it down the cell toilet.
He then refused to comply with a search, was “grounded and handcuffed,” during which police uncovered a packet of suspected illicit drugs. After the search, the man admitted to consuming two grams of fentanyl.
The man was then taken to Health Science north for further examination and a CT scan. The physician revealed the complainant had sustained a right metacarpal fracture (hand fracture), which was determined to have predated his interaction with police.
With the man indicating he sustained the injury during his interaction with police and that they’d sexually assaulted him, an SIU team was dispatched, with three investigators arriving on the scene by 5:47 p.m. on Oct. 2.
In their investigation, they noted there were cameras in the cell facilities that recorded some events, but that there were no cameras in the private room where the strip search took place.
“There is some contrary evidence, which, if true, could conceivably amount to a sexual assault,” according to the SIU report,which notes one of the officers inserted his fingers into the man’s rectum and removed a package of drugs. A female officer also watched the interaction and at one point closed a door slightly, obscuring a camera’s view.
“This rendition of events, however, is insufficiently cogent to warrant being put to the test by a court of law,” according to the report, noting the source of evidence was “dishonest in other context,” including the fact the man’s hand injury was an old one.
“For these and other reasons, it would be unsafe and unwise to rest charges on the strength of the more incriminating evidence, particularly in light of the countervailing evidence by the officers,” according to the report.
With “no reasonable grounds” to believe the supervising officer conducted himself unlawfully, the report concludes there’s no basis for proceeding with criminal charges.
The file is considered closed.
