What the station cameras recorded while the booking report said no force.
At three minutes past four on the afternoon of March 15, 2026, a citizen in custody at a Kitchener police station, who had been denied his prescribed insulin and clonazepam three times, performed a handstand against the wall of Interview Room 9. At approximately fourteen minutes past four he was on his hands and knees on the floor. At approximately thirty-nine minutes past four he was in a fetal position. At approximately two minutes past six, he was placed in front of the Intoxilyzer. The booking report filed by the arresting officer says: Force used, No. Conductive weapon used, No. The station cameras say otherwise on both counts.
Kitchener, Ont.The handstand was performed at 15:54 and eighteen seconds, on the wall camera of Interview Room 9 at a Kitchener police station. The citizen in custody had been in the building for approximately forty-five minutes, having been transported from the scene of his arrest at his own residential address. He had been fingerprinted. He had been asked to sign paperwork he had declined to sign, on the grounds that he had invoked the right to counsel and was exercising the right to silence while counsel was outstanding. He had asked for his prescribed medications three times. Three times, the request was denied or unaddressed. He had been placed in Interview Room 9 pending the breath-testing process. At 15:54, he placed both hands on the wall, inverted his body, and held a handstand position for several seconds before returning upright. The handstand required full upper-body strength, full lower-body strength, normal balance and proprioception, and normal neuromuscular coordination. The handstand was photographed by the wall camera. The handstand is in the Crown's own produced disclosure.
At approximately 16:14, twenty minutes after the handstand, the same camera captured the same citizen on his hands and knees on the floor of the same room. The transition from a handstand against the wall to hands-and-knees on the floor in twenty minutes is not a transition that a normal cardiovascular or alcohol impairment explains. Alcohol does not accelerate at that rate. Alcohol does not produce a clinical deterioration arc of that speed and severity in a person who was, twenty minutes prior, performing a balance exercise. The transition has two candidate explanations, on the documented medical record in this custody file: the withholding, three times, of insulin from a person who requires insulin, and the withholding, three times, of clonazepam from a person for whom clonazepam is prescribed. Both medications were logged at intake. The medications are in the possession of the staff. The medications were not administered. The cameras are running.
What the cameras continued to record
At approximately 16:39, still in Interview Room 9, the citizen was in a position the camera frame analysis describes as fetal or curled, body on its side or back, limbs drawn in, consistent with a person who can no longer sustain normal upright posture. This is the third camera frame of a deterioration sequence running from 15:54 to 16:39, forty-five minutes. At approximately 17:54, on a different camera in the same facility, the citizen was flat on his back. The station cameras capture this arc across four independent camera feeds. The feeds are the Crown's own produced disclosure.
At 16:28, the citizen was brought, for the first time, to the Intoxilyzer. The breath room video, a separate camera recording the testing room, shows that the citizen spent two minutes and thirty-six seconds on the designated bench in the hallway adjacent to the breath room door, not inside the room, not in the accused's chair, not in a position from which the breath demand could have been understood and deliberately refused. He was on the bench in the hallway. The door to the breath room was in front of him, not around him. What was recorded as a refusal, on the official breath-testing documentation filed with this matter, was a citizen who had been deteriorating physically for over half an hour, on the hallway bench, unable to enter the room and unable to respond to a demand directed at him through the door.
The booking report
The booking report in this matter was authored by the officer of record, the same officer whose vehicle transported the citizen from the scene of arrest to the station, the same officer who drafted the Crown synopsis, and the same officer whose actions, during the arrest, are captured on the vehicle's nine-camera security system. The booking report contains two fields this magazine is addressing directly. The first field asks: Force used? The report says: No. The second field asks: Conductive weapon used? The report says: No.
The vehicle's security cameras, recording the arrest, show the officer physically gripping the citizen's forearm and clothing during the extraction from the vehicle, while two other officers were simultaneously present on the other side of the vehicle. Three officers, one vehicle, one citizen who had asked four times for a badge number and had been told by one of the officers "You don't need my badge number." A conductive energy weapon was, on the same security camera recording, pressed to the citizen's shoulder during the same sequence. The officer whose hand is visible pressing the weapon to the citizen's shoulder confirmed, on the recording, that the answer to the question "Are you going to tase me for sleeping in my car in front of my house?" was yes. The officer is on camera. The answer is on camera. The booking report says the conductive weapon was not used. The report was authored by the officer whose hand is in the frame.
The handstand was at 15:54. By 16:14 the citizen was on hands and knees. By 16:39 he was in fetal position. Insulin denied three times. Clonazepam denied three times. The booking report says no force was used.
The problem with an unreviewed booking report
The booking report is a document that passes, in the standard chain of disclosure, from the arresting officer to the Crown's disclosure package, to the accused's defence file, with no independent verification in between. The officer who drafts it is the officer who conducted the arrest. The officer who conducted the arrest has an interest, which is not unique to this officer and is structural to the documentation system, in describing the arrest in a way that does not generate complaints, disciplinary proceedings, or Charter applications. The booking report is not reviewed, before disclosure, by a supervisor who was not at the scene. It is not reviewed by the Crown attorney who screens the charges. It is not reviewed by the court. It is disclosed as-is. Its accuracy is tested, if it is tested at all, by the defence at trial. In the meantime, it is the official record. It says no force. It says no conductive weapon. The cameras say otherwise. The cameras are also in disclosure. The two records have not, at any court appearance on this matter, been reconciled by anyone in the system whose job it would be to reconcile them.
What the country owes a person in custody
A person in police custody retains, under section 12 of the Charter, the right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual treatment. The country has interpreted section 12 in the context of custody conditions broadly, to include conditions that are grossly disproportionate to the legitimate purposes of custody. Withholding prescribed medications from a person in custody who has identified those medications at intake, who has requested them three times, and who is demonstrably deteriorating on camera while they are withheld, is not a condition that any honest application of section 12 would describe as proportionate to any legitimate custodial purpose. The medication is in the custody area. The person is in the custody area. The medication is prescribed. The deterioration is on camera. The person was not given the medication.
The same cameras that show the deterioration also show, at points in the sequence, officers in the same facility whose expressions, at the moments visible on the camera frames, are not the expressions of people who are alarmed by what they are observing. The frames are in the Crown's produced disclosure. The country allows these frames to be in the disclosure without anyone having been, as of this publication date, asked to account for them.
The verdict
The handstand was at 15:54. Forty-five minutes later, the same body that held the handstand was on its side in a fetal position after prescribed medications were denied three times. The booking report says no force. The cameras say a conductive weapon was pressed to the accused's shoulder. The cameras say three officers extracted the citizen from the vehicle. The booking report was authored by one of the three officers. The booking report says no force.
The country has cameras in custody facilities because cameras are supposed to prevent exactly what this camera captured. The country has produced the cameras as disclosure because the cameras, in this case, are the Crown's disclosure. The country has not, in ninety days of appearances on this file, been asked by anyone to explain the gap between the booking report and the four camera feeds that contradict it. The country should be asked. The question is: which do you believe? The report that the officer wrote, or the cameras the officer did not know were watching?