The province’s police watchdog says it will not lay any charges against a Toronto police officer who was involved in a downtown arrest in May that left a cyclist seriously injured. Joseph Martino, the director of the Special Investigations Unit, concluded his investigation into the May 31 incident, saying he did not find any reasonable grounds to charge the officer. The SIU said the cyclist, a 21-year-old man, was riding along Queens Quay West near Little Norway Crescent when he disobeyed a stop sign. As he biked through the sign, he turned his head to the direction of several Toronto police officers, who were in the area conducting targeted bicycle enforcement, standing at the southwest corner of the intersection and said, “F--- the police,” according to SIU’s report released on Tuesday. That caught the attention of the officers, the SIU said, and they signalled other officers standing in another corner of the intersection to stop the cyclist. The cyclist tried to evade the arrest by biking around the officer, the SIU said. One officer chased the cyclist and extended his left arm to make contact with the cyclist’s backpack. The cyclist then lost control and toppled over on the grass and the sidewalk. The SIU said the officer fell on top of the cyclist and forced him flat on the ground. Two other officers came and pinned the cyclist to the ground for a period as he was being handcuffed. The arrest was caught on camera and was later posted online. “It was unclear in the footage whether the officer made contact with the cyclist’s backpack intending to grab a hold of him or to push the man off the bike,” the SIU said. Martino noted that he “found that the risk of injury was moderate, as the man had significantly slowed when the officer stepped out in front of him and wrestled the man to the ground.” The cyclist was ticketed and released from custody, the SIU said. He was later diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injury. David Shellnut, The Biking Lawyer who represented the cyclist, said in June after the video was posted that he was concerned about the police’s “aggressive” response. In his report on Tuesday, SIU Director Martino said he was satisfied with the force used by the officer and that it “fell within the range of what was lawful in the circumstances.” “Once on the ground, the (officer) would have been rightly concerned that the (cyclist) would continue his efforts to flee. That consideration justifies the officer’s efforts to wrestle the (cyclist) firmly to the ground and to keep him pinned there pending the arrival of the other officers,” Martino said. “In the result, while I accept that the Complainant’s injury was incurred in the interaction with the SO that marked his arrest, there are no reasonable grounds to believe the injury is attributable to unlawful conduct on the part of the officer.”
