Video of Winnipeg police officers kneeing and repeatedly kicking a man, who was on the ground, during a recent arrest has enraged critics — but a police spokesperson says the use of force was justified, and might have saved the man’s life.
Video of Winnipeg police officers kneeing and repeatedly kicking a man, who was on the ground, during a recent arrest has enraged critics — but a police spokesperson says the use of force was justified, and might have saved the man’s life.
The video, taken by a witness, shows three officers pinning a man face down during an arrest on Thursday morning. One knees the man in the side, and another, holding a carbine rifle, walks up and kicks him twice in the shoulder.
The witness video, which runs a little over a minute, was posted online that afternoon by Winnipeg Police Cause Harm, which describes itself as a police abolitionist group.
Winnipeg police released three minutes of surveillance video showing the incident from different angles after a news conference on Friday afternoon.
“Admittedly, it’s a tough video to watch,” Winnipeg Police Service spokesperson Const. Jay Murray said at the news conference.
Murray said three people called 911 just before 8 a.m. local time on Thursday about a man with a gun in the city’s Exchange District.
WATCH | Video of police arresting, kicking a man on the ground:
A surveillance video supplied by the Winnipeg Police Service shows officers using force to arrest a man they say was armed with a knife and a heavy bar. 3:10
Police say the man smashed the window of the Centennial Concert Hall with a brick and threw down the gun when officers arrived. But he refused to comply with their demands to get on the ground, and assaulted one of them, police said.
As police struggled to handcuff him, they found he was carrying a knife and a heavy bar, Murray said. The gun turned out to be an Airsoft gun.
The bar is not seen in either video. A black object which appears to be the gun is visible in the video p