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An Ottawa police officer who stepped on a man’s neck for more than two minutes and allegedly struck him with a baton is now awaiting a verdict after his lawyer argued that video evidence looks worse than the reality.
The Ottawa Ontario Court of Justice heard closing arguments Thursday in the case of Const. Goran Beric, who is facing charges of assault and assault with a weapon for how he dealt with Derrick Weyman two years ago.
Defence counsel Karin Stein said her client, an officer with the Ottawa police since 2006, was acting reasonably in an attempt to control Weyman who was rambling incoherently and covered in blood. She cited a security guard who said the man was acting like a “zombie” or “possessed,” and argued he was a threat to the public, to police and to himself.
But Crown lawyer Vlatko Karadzic cast Beric’s acts as retribution borne out of anger.
Beric and other officers responded to reports of blood and screaming at an Ottawa Community Housing building on Bronson Avenue on the night of Aug. 4, 2021.
Beric found Weyman there, uncooperative and speaking “gibberish,” according to court transcripts. There was blood, and little clarity on where it came from. Both lawyers agree that, in a back hallway, Beric’s baton contacted Weyman’s head, though divergent witness testimony gave them wide latitude to disagree on what that meant.
One of Beric’s fellow officers called it a “flick” of a baton. Another preferred the term “bonk.” Yet another said “loose strikes.” Beric himself used the word “tap.”
Whatever it was, Karadzic argued that it qualified as assault with a weapon. While Stein acknowledged it was clearly offside with police training, she called it a “light touch” intended to get Weyman’s attention.
“He’s not held to the standard of perfection,” she said. “There’s a lot of things that he could have done better, and he acknowledges that.”
Defence blames COVID fears for boot on neck
There was no camera to record what Beric initially did with his baton. But much of what came next was captured on video. Weyman was seen stumbling. He “advanced” or “lunged” toward officers, Stein said. Beric used his foot in what Stein described as a “push-kick” to protect himself.
Another officer brought Weyman to the ground, the court heard. Beric joined the struggle, and ultimately placed his boot on Weyman’s neck and head.
Stein argued that was a reasonable attempt to redirect his head away, as Beric attempted to protect himself against spit, blood and disease.
“Nobody wanted to really get close to this man, who was bleeding profusely,” she said, “not just because of communicable disease, but there was the concern about COVID at the time.”
The video “looms large throughout this entire case,” Stein said. But she saw “obvious frailties” in the story it seemed to tell. In her view, the video doesn’t give a sense of the copious amount of blood witnesses described. She said it’s hard to distinguish what’s what in a “fuzzy” black mass. There are parts where the viewer can’t see Weyman directly.
“On the video it looks a lot worse,” Stein acknowledged. “It definitely does.”
Relying on testimony, she said Beric kept his heel on the floor while he used his foot to put “light pressure” on Weyman’s neck. She noted that Weyman never lost consciousness.
She said Beric was dealing with a fast-moving situation he had never faced before. She said he used no more force than was necessary based on the risk and dangers he faced.
Karadzic disagreed. He called Stein’s account “complete fiction.” Perhaps it might have been reasonable to take brief action to guard against the threat of blood, but in his view, that isn’t what Beric did when he kept his foot planted on Weyman.
“You’re not entitled to do that for two minutes and five seconds while the person is struggling to get your foot off their neck,” he said.
“At a certain point, that foot on that man’s head becomes unnecessary, unreasonable and completely disproportionate to his arms that are flopping by his side.”
He seemed to agree that blood was at the centre of the trial. But where Stein saw fear, he saw anger.
“The reason he delivered those strikes is as a retaliatory measure for this individual who wasn’t listening to him and is getting blood all over him,” said Karadzic.
Credibility at issue
While both lawyers spent time dissecting the video evidence, they spent still more tearing apart the credibility of competing witnesses.
In testimony, Beric said the scene looked like something out of the movie The Shining. He said Weyman had been aggressive and was touching him all over, and that he was “paranoid” that the blood-soaked man could pull a knife. He said he aimed to use his baton defensively.
But Karadzic pointed to “serious credibility and reliability concerns” in Beric’s testimony.
He instead relied on the evidence of another officer, Michael Rizk, who he called “the best historian” of how Beric employed his baton. He noted that Beric’s fellow officer — the one who described his use of the baton as loose strikes — had absolutely no reason to lie.
Stein cast Rizk as an unreliable witness with a spotty memory and inconsistent testimony. She urged Judge Janet O’Brien to consider his evidence “carefully.”
O’Brien is expected to deliver her decision on the case in October.
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