Key takeaways:
- Witness says a man was inside the makeshift shelter with shoes off when the incident started.
- The officer pushed the man badly enough to fall into a concrete wall in the video.
Montreal police have launched an internal probe after a video started circulating on social media showing an officer violently shoving a male to the ground in a Chinatown alleyway.
A representative for the police stated the service’s Direction de l’intégrité et des normes professionnelles will be overseeing the inquiry.
CBC News talked with the individual who caught the happening on video Thursday, filming it about lunchtime in the alley between St-Urbain and Clark streets.
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The police were approaching people in the alley and searching them, stated the witness, whom CBC has decided not to identify. Most of the individuals being searched were compliant, but when the officers came to a man in a makeshift shelter made of a couple of pallets, things got heated, the witness stated.
One officer appeared to draw a supporting plank from the shelter that forced a part of the structure to collapse on the man, the witness said. The move appeared to be planned, and the man was then touching his head and looking at his hand as if checking for blood, the witness stated.
The man became upset and was screaming, but the police were pushing him constantly and chasing him away, the witness said.
Source – cbc.ca
