The Alberta Crown Prosecution Service will not charge three St. Albert RCMP officers who arrested a teenager with autism, despite the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team’s (ASIRT) determination that there “were reasonable grounds to believe an offence had been committed.”
That’s according to an ASIRT report released Wednesday that details the child’s arrest and subsequent hospitalization and contains witness testimony.
In Oct. 2022, police arrested the then 16-year-old, who was playing in the Lacombe School Playground, for public intoxication, mistakenly believing him to be a known drug user who lived in the area.
The report refers to the teen as “Autistic Person,” abbreviated to AP.
“The AP was not intoxicated,” Matthew Block, assistant executive director with ASIRT, wrote in the report. “He was a non-verbal autistic youth. Three of the four civilian witnesses who observed AP recognized that he could be or was likely neurodivergent.”
Block noted that ASIRT and Crown prosecutors have different processes for deciding whether to lay charges.
“ASIRT … applies a criminal code standard that determines whether an offence has been committed,” he said. “The ACPS … applies a standard which examines whether there is a reasonable likelihood of conviction, and whether it is in the public interest to proceed with a prosecution.”
The officers could have been charged with unlawful confinement if they arrested an individual without proper grounds, the report notes. “If force is applied in the arrest, the officer may also be committing an assault,” it says.
The report describes the initial call to police, in which the caller said the youth was someone with either “a severe handicap who should not be left alone” or someone “tripping on drugs.”
The officer who responded to the call located the youth playing in a sandbox, according to the report. The officer tried to get the youth to provide a name and address, but he didn’t get a coherent answer and instead the youth repeated phrases unrelated to the officer’s questions.
A witness saw the officer tell the youth to “go home,” and recognized the sounds made by the youth as “characteristic of someone with a mental disability,” the report says.
The youth left the park, and the officer went into an adjacent parking lot where he discovered a car with a license plate that belonged to a known drug user, validating his suspicion that the youth was simply a man high on drugs.
The officer asked a playground visitor to call if the youth returned. About half an hour later, the witness called to report that youth was back at the playground, skipping and repeating unintelligible words.
The officer returned to the playground and called two additional officers, who believed the youth was another, separate, drug user known to be “combative.”
The three officers converged on the park. A witness who was riding his bike saw the officers arrest the youth. Two officers approached from behind and handcuffed the youth.
The witness said that the youth was “yelping, making loud sounds and yelling erratically.” He believed the youth had a mental disorder and was not intoxicated. The witness found it “difficult to watch” and left the scene.
Audio from police recording equipment captured the youth shouting “help” and calling for his mom.
One officer was captured saying “he’s drunk,” and another that “he literally lives nearby.” The officers said they were arresting the youth for public intoxication.
At one point, after the teen was secured in the police car, an officer left to check on the house of the known drug user who he had misidentified as the youth. The suspect was home.
On the car ride to the police detachment, police video cameras captured the youth kicking the door and repeatedly hitting his head against a partition between seats.
The video also showed police repeatedly asking the youth where he lived, and the youth responding with “playground,” “it’s okay” and screaming.
When police put the youth in a jail cell, the youth paced, pounded his fists on the cell and hit his head on the cell door four times, at which point police called paramedics, who sedated the youth and took him to the hospital.
In a February 2023 interview, the officer who responded to the initial call said that his grounds for arrest were “the yelling, flinging of arms and erratic behaviour, the obsession of the repeating words over and over, and a grown adult in the playground, as well as his pupils appeared dilated.” He said police didn’t use force, and only handcuffed the youth. He said he would have arrested anyone who was behaving this way, regardless of whether he believed they were a suspected drug user.
Another officer said that he could see the youth’s eyes and thought the youth was high on drugs.
In a Facebook post, the teen's mother said that it would be an "understatement" to describe what her family is experiencing as disappointment.
"It's plain to see he was just a kid at the park minding his own business," she said. After a year and a half, the teen still "isn't okay," the post reads.
"These officers must be held accountable, and the system must change," the post reads. "Our neurodivergent children deserve the right to life, liberty and security of the person."
“RCMP acknowledge the ASIRT findings," said Cpl. Troy Savinkoff, a public information officer with the RCMP. "Although our internal investigation has been completed, this matter is still before the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP. All involved officers remain in active duty status.”
"It would be inappropriate to comment further at this time," he said.
