Cyclist and church treasurer sues Hamilton police, claiming wrongful arrest
Man alleges he was wrongfully taken off his bicycle, assaulted, chased and nearly run over in 2015
Kelly Bennett · CBC News · Posted: Jan 11, 2017 3:14 PM EST | Last Updated: January 12, 2017
A Hamilton man is suing police over an incident in 2015 where he alleges he was intimidated, kicked in the ribs, humiliated and falsely arrested.
Kevin Love, 54, was riding his bike home from St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church, where he was working late as the church’s treasurer.
A retired infantry officer with the Canadian Armed Forces, Love said an interaction with Hamilton police officers that night was jarring.
“I was coming home from the church,” he said. “What more innocent victim— I was not doing anything wrong at all.”
He was riding a SoBi Hamilton bike share bike from the Locke Street and Charlton Avenue area to his home, in Durand, around 2 a.m., when an officer came up behind him in a cruiser, he said in a lawsuit filed late last month.
The officer said she was looking for a male suspect who’d been seen breaking into cars.
“What are you doing?” he said she said to him, in an intimidating tone of voice, according to Love.
He didn’t identify himself, telling the officer just that he wasn’t who she was looking for. A series of interactions ensued with her and another officer, getting increasingly aggressive, the lawsuit alleges.
He alleges they used cars to try to knock him off his bike. He said they pulled him off his bike and threw him to the ground, kicking him when he was down.
Before deciding to sue, Love filed a formal complaint with the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD), which launched an investigation but ultimately ended up rejecting his complaints that two officers acted with excessive force and discreditable conduct. The investigation found him “uncooperative” and “actively resistant.”
But Love still believes he was wronged. That’s why he’s now suing.
“Mr. Love did not match the suspect’s description,” the lawsuit states, though it doesn’t list what that description was. “Mr. Love was not observed engaged in any suspicious activity.”
Kevin Love holds up the shirt he was wearing the night he was riding home, showing a hole he says a Hamilton police officer ripped when he was being arrested. (Kelly Bennett/CBC)
The lawsuit goes on to state one of Love’s most dramatic physical attributes: He is six feet eight inches tall.
Love and his attorney, Davin Charney, allege that his height and the fact that he wasn’t doing anything like searching in car windows, mean that he didn’t match the description of the person the officer was looking for.
“He’s not doing anything suspicious; he’s just a guy on a bicycle,” Charney said.
None of the lawsuit’s allegations have been tested in court.
The interaction looked differently to police.
While the police have not filed a statement of defence in court, the OIPRD report, completed October 2015, includes accounts from the two officers named in the lawsuit, as well as from Love.
The OIPRD report concluded the officers were “lawfully entitled to stop and request identification” from Love because they were looking for a male suspect on a bike who’d committed 50 recent thefts.
“The complainant fit this vague description,” the report states. “The officers were authorized by law to engage the complainant in a traffic stop to which he initially refused. This prompted the officers to suspect that perhaps the complainant was the person they were originally looking for.”
That may become a sticking point as the case develops. The Highway Traffic Act states that cyclists must show identification or verbally state their name and address if an officer finds them contravening laws governing traffic and the road.
Love said he wasn’t riding the wrong way or blowing any stop signs. The bike he was riding was a SoBi, which has built-in lights.
Moreover, he notes, the OIPRD report doesn’t list any allegations that he did break any laws.
The report says Love was released once he identified himself.
Love is suing for $400,000 and costs, asking for damages for physical injury, emotional and mental distress and other impacts from the incident. He also is asking for “aggravated damages for the insulting, high-handed, malicious and oppressive conduct” by two officers named in the suit.
Coun. Lloyd Ferguson, who is chair of the Hamilton police services board, said Wednesday he had not yet received any lawsuit.
“I am not aware of this statement of claim yet so I cannot comment at this time,” Ferguson said.
Hamilton Police Service declined to comment, “to protect the integrity of the civil proceedings.”