Video released by a Toronto court Thursday shows two plainclothes Toronto Police Service officers allegedly gripping a Black man by his throat and throwing him down to the floor of a city bus over a fare dispute in December 2019.
The Globe and Mail
A bus passenger who was captured on video being held around the neck by a Toronto police officer told a court Thursday that he believes he was mistreated because he is Black.
“I don’t think a young white male entering the onto the back of the bus would have had to have gone through all that,” Chase Richards testified. He was speaking as a witness in the trial of Detective Christopher Hutchings, one of two police officers who have been charged in connection with Mr. Richards’ Dec. 13, 2019 arrest aboard a Toronto Transit Commission vehicle.
After the incident, the Toronto Police Service charged Det. Hutchings and Detective Jason Tanouye with assault. Months later, both were also charged with attempting to obstruct justice. Det. Hutchings has pleaded not guilty, and Det. Tanouye’s trial has been scheduled separately.
Video entered as evidence in the trial shows one of the officers gripping Mr. Richards by his neck and throwing him to the floor of a Scarborough bus.
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Mr. Richards, 40, told the court he moved to Canada from Jamaica when he was a teenager. He boarded Bus 3404 in Scarborough around 8:30 p.m. on a busy winter evening.
Because Mr. Richards entered through the bus’s back doors, the driver summoned him to the front, apparently suspecting he was skipping a fare. Mr. Richards countered that he had paid with his TTC Presto card. He made a point of tapping it again in front of the bus driver and fellow passengers.
The driver, however, decided to pull the bus out of service, order all passengers off and alert police to a problem.
”The driver said he didn’t want to drive with me because I smelled of cigarettes and so on,” Mr. Richards testified. He told Ontario Court of Justice Judge Apple Newton-Smith that he decided to stay on as the other passengers left.
”I’m a young Black man and I didn’t want to be accused of cheating or leaving the scene.”
Two plainclothes police officers boarded the bus. One of the officers asked the bus driver whether Mr. Richards was the one causing the disturbing, swearing while doing so, Mr. Richards testified. He said he interrupted the officer’s conversation with the bus driver to say that he wasn’t causing any disturbance, saying “I paid my fare.”
Video footage of the confrontation that followed shows one of the officers gripping Mr. Richards around his neck and pushing him into a seat. The officer allowed Mr. Richards to stand up but then threw him to the ground.
That night, Mr. Richards was criminally charged with causing a disturbance and mischief. But those charges were later dropped amid an internal-affairs investigation by police after Mr. Richards pressed for a review of bus’s video footage.
Neck holds by police have long been under scrutiny – particularly since the Minneapolis Police used such a technique during the arrest of George Floyd. His death by asphyxiation sparked mass protests across North America.
The Toronto court this week heard that some neck-area-gripping techniques by police are permissible, especially if an officer’s intent is to pacify a person with pain points, while being sure to avoid choking anyone out.
“One of the goals of pain-compliance techniques is there is an autonomic response when those nerve bundles are activated, with pressure like that, to move away from the source of that pain,” use-of-force expert Chris Butler testified as he viewed the tape of Mr. Richards’ arrest.
Mr. Richards’ testimony will continue in coming weeks.
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Colin Freeze