An independent investigation of Burns Lake RCMP officers calls it “very troubling” that police left a woman in a jail cell while suffering from a broken leg last August.
The Independent Investigations Office of BC (IIO) assessed the events of Aug. 4, 2022 when in the late afternoon local RCMP officers arrested an intoxicated woman and took her to a cell in the Burns Lake detachment. The following morning the woman, who was unnamed, was taken to hospital with a broken leg.
The IIO’s report of its investigation, released on Apr. 14, concluded that while no criminal offence was committed, “it is very troubling that she was left to spend the night in pain and discomfort.”
The IIO concluded that the officers did not use an unreasonable amount of force on the woman, who was said to have been resisting arrest. However, the report says the evidence gathered “raises issues” about the quality of care the woman received in the cell.
The report offers three differing narratives of the incident, told to IIO investigators.
On Aug. 4, officers responded to a complaint about a disturbance in a home on Tibbets Drive. Witness Officer (‘WO’) said that police tried to persuade the woman, or ‘AP’ (Affected Person) to let them drive her home, but after she refused they moved to arrest her for mischief and breach of the peace.
The woman was violently resisting, WO said. She continued resisting at the detachment, and ignored commands to lie down while officers tried to search her.
“[WO] said he heard some ‘thuds and thumps’ as he was completing paperwork, and when he looked up, all three were on the floor in the cell.”
When WO visited the cell around 2 a.m, the woman was ‘screaming incoherently’ and complaining of a broken leg. WO and the civilian guard on duty saw no direct evidence of her injury.
Later that morning, when WO went to release her, she didn’t come out of the cell, which convinced him she was injured, and he called an ambulance.
In AP’s own account, she said the officers refused to let her friend (whom she said was also intoxicated) take her home on Aug. 4. The woman said she was handcuffed and taken to the car and RCMP station, though she said she wouldn’t walk to the car with the police and just wanted to go home.
“‘That lady cop went and kicked me in the back of my leg,’” and AP said she was injured before she reached the cells. AP complained to the guards but was ignored and then told it was “just a sprain.” She said that at the hospital, her right leg was so swollen that doctors couldn’t operate until the swelling reduced, and that surgeons had replaced her shattered knee cap.
Video recordings at the detachment offer a third perspective. The videos show the woman could walk normally when she was brought to the station and resisted when officers tried to hold her in place while standing.
The officers made two attempts to sweep her legs, and then lowered her to the floor. The sweeps weren’t forceful and she wasn’t kicked, the report says.
However, video during her custody shows her in distress and she made no attempt to stand up. A cell log completed by the guard showed 46 observations between 6:32 p.m. and when the ambulance arrived at 5:02 a.m, all of them noting her physical distress, evidence of her injury and her complaints and verbal anguish.
“There is no mention of WO’s reported visit to the cell at about 2 a.m,” the report says, later concluding that WO and the guard failed in their duty to properly respond to her.
It also concludes by saying the RCMP will now have to determine if officers Lake violated the force’s code of conduct.