Waterloo Regional Police constable loses eight days of time off as discipline for violent arrest caught on video
WATERLOO REGION — A Waterloo Regional Police constable has been stripped of eight days of time off and ordered into extra training after he violently, wrongfully arrested a Cambridge woman on her front lawn.
By Jeff Outhit Waterloo Region Record Wednesday, November 3, 2021
Const. Jesse Foster’s penalty was revealed Tuesday, ending a public misconduct hearing after he arrested Natasha Broomes in 2017.
An adjudicator found Foster guilty of excessive force in an unlawful arrest, but cleared him of racial profiling in a case that Broomes contends is entirely about race.
Foster is white. Broomes is Black.
“His entire interaction was troubling, and the outcome was a member of the community was pushed into a vehicle, grounded, handcuffed, and held in custody, and all she did was take her son to work,” adjudicator Debra Preston wrote in imposing the penalty.
“The conduct of Constable Foster is serious, and it detracts from the organizational commitment to professionalism.”
While Preston wrote that Foster is not “a rogue officer by any stretch,” she also found “there is no penalty that can ‘right the wrong’ as experienced by Ms. Broomes or restore her faith in the policing profession.”
Broomes, 45, called the penalty a slap on the wrist for the constable and a “slap in the face” for her.
But while disappointed she is also unsurprised, saying the police disciplinary system responds poorly to racial profiling.
Broomes remains persuaded that if she were white, this would not have happened to her. After four years she is still traumatized by the wrongful arrest, unable to work and struggling with her mental health.
The fallout has forced her to relocate to Toronto, she said, away from family who still live in Cambridge because she finds it difficult to be in her hometown.
She does not regret making her complaint, hoping others who are mistreated by police can call on her case to help argue theirs.
Foster arrested Broomes in her front yard in Cambridge at 5:30 a.m. on July 29, 2017. She had just driven home and stepped out of her car after dropping her son off at his job.
Her red SUV matched a vehicle description connected to an armed Black man police were seeking. Broomes, wearing pyjamas, had no connection to the suspect but Foster persisted in thinking she might.
When Broomes exercised her right to not identify herself, Foster swept her off her feet, forced her to the ground and tried to handcuff her. She screamed in pain after recent surgery and yelled for help, fearing the officer was about to shoot her.
Part of the noisy arrest was filmed on a blurry video on Broomes’s phone. Her arrest was so loud a neighbour called 911 fearing a woman was being attacked.
Preston found that Foster acted out of poor judgment. At that time he had been a police officer for six years.
Waterloo Regional Police said in a statement that it accepts the ruling and penalty and “remains confident that we can move forward to continue building trust and confidence in policing within the community.”
Broomes sued Waterloo Regional Police for $700,000 over the arrest and settled the lawsuit for an undisclosed amount.
The hearing heard that Const. Foster’s mental health has suffered under the shadow of a four-year prosecution.
Foster’s misconduct was not deemed serious enough for him to lose his job. A prosecutor asked that he be stripped of 10 days of time off. Foster, who pleaded not guilty and whose record is otherwise spotless, asked to be stripped of three days of time off.
Broomes did not tell the misconduct hearing how to punish Foster. The adjudicator said her input would have been helpful.
But recommending a penalty would have been pointless, Broomes’s lawyer Davin Charney said.
“I know that the adjudicator would follow precedent … and I know that those precedents are wholly inadequate,” Charney said.
Foster has been ordered to take more training in conflict resolution and de-escalation, investigative detention, the Highway Traffic Act, and powers of arrest.