Contributed
The videos made by two witnesses were the first evidence presented at the trial of a Kelowna RCMP officer on Tuesday.
Const. Siggy Emmett-Steven Pietrzak was charged with assault almost a year after he was filmed repeatedly punching a man during a detention in downtown Kelowna on May 30, 2020.
The man at the receiving end of Const. Pietrzak’s successes, Tyler Russell, filed a lawsuit against the officer in June 2020 after Castanet posted a video of the arrest on his cell phone. The RCMP also submitted a response to the lawsuit.
The first video of the iPhone played in court was made by Cameron Vold. Vold was walking from City Park Beach with a couple of friends to the Cactus Club when he saw a commotion and started filming.
He testified that he saw someone arrested across the street near Kelly O’Bryan’s parking lot. Two officers were trying to put the man’s arms behind him when a third officer ran in and started punching him in the face.
Vold told the court he saw five or six punches thrown.
Under the questioning of defense attorney David Butcher, Vold stated that he could not say for sure how many times they connected, but he was “sick sure you can see him (Pietrzak) hitting him (Russell) in the face.” .
A slow motion version of the video was played, and Vold said he could see twice that they were connected.
The second video on the iPhone was made by former professional baseball player and former Canadian team member Tyson Gillies.
He was just sitting with some friends for dinner on Kelly O’Bryan’s rooftop patio when he saw and heard other diners running to the side and looking down. Gillies started filming almost immediately.
He captured the ongoing arrest, with two officers fighting to control Russell, and then Pietrzak running to the scene.
Gillies admitted that the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis just five days earlier had aroused anti-police sentiment in the community. He stated that he cut the sound of the video when he sent it to his mother and a couple more people for offensive language.
When Butcher was questioned, Gillies said some of the people in the yard were shouting “grab him,” but he couldn’t tell if they were addressing police or Russell in his comments.
The first RCMP officer to meet Russell that day also took up the post during the inaugural day of testimony.
Const. Jacqualine Davidson said she responded to a woman’s complaint about a man in the parking lot behind 294 Bernard Ave. that he was possibly impaired and acting erratically, and the woman was afraid he might leave.
Davidson testified that Russell appeared to be drugged and did not cooperate when he met him in the passenger seat of a pickup truck. She refused to answer most of her questions, but as she did not appear to be in the commission of a crime, she left the post. Before leaving, another officer from the traffic unit arrived to monitor the man in the vehicle.
About 45 minutes later, he returned to the scene when he heard calls for assistance from officers at the scene. She did not see Const. Pietrzak was in the parking lot, but saw him in the RCMP cells that night, where he noticed that his right hand was red and swollen.
Crown prosecutor David Hainey opened the trial with the argument that he would try to show that Pietrzak used force that exceeded what was considered necessary, reasonable and proportionate according to the policy and training of the RCMP and based on in a previous decision of the Supreme Court of Canada.
Butcher also offered brief comments. He argued that based on what his client saw when he arrived at the scene, Pietrzak assessed that the two officers fighting Russell could not make the arrest on their own and decided to go on “hard strikes”. Butcher added that the judge in the case, Mariane Armstrong, should decide if the number of strikes was too high.
The Crown will call several more RCMP officers, including an expert on the use of force by the police.
The trial is set to continue for most of this week and will resume in late June.