B.C. teen alleges she was assaulted and unlawfully detained by police

Victoria police surveillance video shows her bound and tethered in cell

Last Updated: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 | 6:45 PM PT

CBC News

A B.C. teenager alleges Victoria police assaulted and unlawfully confined her when she was just 15.

Police surveillance videotape shows Willow Kinloch detained in a padded cell, where police officers are seen holding her down, handcuffing her, tying her feet and leaving her tethered to the cell door, where she stayed for four hours.

Willow Kinloch, now 18, says she doesn't see why Victoria police found her a threat and detained her at a police station in May 2005.
(CBC)

Kinloch's family has filed a civil law suit against the City of Victoria and the four officers involved. The case is expected to go to trial this fall.

"If I didn't have this tape, I don't think anyone would have believed me because it's my word against theirs, and, you know, I was intoxicated, and I was 15," Kinloch said. "I didn't know that they stuck drunk teenagers in there or that they would leash you up."

The incident happened in May 2005. Kinloch said her trouble began after she got extremely intoxicated at an outdoor teenage party. Kinloch, who is less than five feet tall, said it was the first time she had gotten drunk. 

The teenager said her friends dropped her off at home around midnight, but she was locked out because she lost her keys. Neighbours called 911 when they saw her staggering outside, out of control. Paramedics arrived and called police.

Police said that when Kinloch was unable to tell them where she lived, they took her to the main Victoria police station and put her in a padded cell to sober her up. They chose a padded cell because no other cells were available at the time, police said.

Teen put in padded cell

"As soon as I was in the padded cell, I was crying, and I wanted to go home, and I was worried about what my parents were thinking — like where I was," Kinloch said.

"My husband went looking for her," said Kinloch's mother, Tammy-Marie Kinloch. "We called her friends and called the hospital. I was terrified that something really bad happened to her."

Police surveillance tape shows Willow Kinloch, then 15, being tethered to a cell door.
(CBC)

Victoria police said when she was left alone in the cell, Kinloch began yelling and bashing the door loudly, wanting to get out.

"She was trying to break out of the cell; she was kicking the cell; she was punching the cell," said Victoria police spokesperson Grant Hamilton.

After four hours, Kinloch said, she calmed down and sobered up. At 4:30 in the morning, police released her and tried to take her home. Once there, Hamilton said, they found that neither the buzzer nor the phone at the Kinloch family apartment was working.

Kinloch said the two male officers refused to let her out of the car to yell to the second-floor window to her parents and refused to let her call her sister, who, she said, had a cellphone.

Because they couldn't legally release a 15-year-old onto the street, Hamilton said, the officers took her back to the station as "a child in need of protection."

"At this point, I'm not drunk anymore," said Kinloch. "I've done nothing wrong. I'm not a threat, and my parents are at home and are going to be worrying about me. I just wanted to go home."

Back at the police station, Kinloch refused to get out of the police car, Hamilton said, so the two officers pulled her out by force. They walked her back to the padded cell, which is the point at which the surveillance videotape begins.

Victoria police spokesperson Grant Hamilton says Willow Kinloch was held as "a child in need of protection" in May 2005.
(CBC)

"I was really upset. I was crying," said Kinloch. "I just don't see how they found me in any way a threat."

Tape shows police tethering girl to cell door

The surveillance tape shows a female guard coming in and gesturing to Kinloch to remove her jacket and her bra. Kinloch complies. When the guard tells her to take off her shoes, the tape shows Kinloch kicking one of them off, and it lands in the corner of the cell. There is no audio on the tape.

The guard, later identified as Special Const. Merle Edmonds, then grabs Kinloch by the throat and pushes her into the back wall. The two officers who had tried to take Kinloch home earlier, Const. Ryan O'Neill and Const. Brian Asmussen, rush in and use force to put Kinloch face down on the floor. They hold her down by her legs, body and head for several minutes while they handcuff her.

Another guard, who is named as John Doe in the civil suit because he was not yet identified at the time the suit was filed, arrives with what looks like a strap or a leash. He ties Kinloch's feet together. The three male officers turn her around and drag her, feet first, to the door. They secure the strap outside the door and close it.

Kinloch was left tethered to the door, hands and feet bound, for four hours.

"I wondered how they would feel if somebody took their child off the street and beat them up and detained them, and they didn't know where their daughter was all night," said Tammy-Marie Kinloch. "If I did that to my child — which I can't imagine any parent would ever do — then throw the key away. Put me in jail."

Willow Kinloch's mother, Tammy-Marie Kinloch, left, says if a parent did to a child what the Victoria police did to her daughter, the parent would be put in jail.
(CBC)

"This is still going to stay with me for the rest of my life," said Willow Kinloch. "And still, you know, there's going to be the odd person who's going to think: 'You were a drunk 15-year-old girl. You probably shouldn't have been out there, and you must have done something to provoke it.' It's not even true. This is how they treat innocent people."

Victoria Police defend use of force

Hamilton said that, based on Kinloch's earlier behaviour — yelling and banging violently on the cell door — the restraint was justified to protect her and others.

When Kinloch kicked off her shoe, the police spokesman said, Edmonds felt threatened. At one point during their interaction, Kinloch grabbed the guard's arm, Hamilton said.

"We had been dealing with her for four hours prior to that where she was combative," said Hamilton. "She was trying to break out of the cell. She was kicking the cell. She was punching the cell. And that moment in time [when Kinloch was restrained] is after we had to forcibly remove her from the vehicle to put her into that padded cell."

After four hours, another police officer who had started his morning shift untied Kinloch and told her she was going to be charged with assaulting Edmonds. She was released and went home to her frantic mother, who was at first relieved to see her, then outraged over what Kinloch told her the police had done.

"I wanted to see the faces of the bullies who had done that to her," said Tammy-Marie Kinloch. "I wanted to know how they could justify hurting her. She was so little and so tiny, and she was such a good girl."

Her parents took Kinloch right back to the police station, where her mother demanded an uninvolved officer take photos of her daughter's bruises. The Kinloch family decided not to file a formal complaint but filed a civil law suit instead.

Victoria police surveillance tape shows Willow Kinloch was tethered to a cell door with her hands and feet bound.
(CBC)

After viewing the surveillance tape, the Crown dropped the assault charge against Kinloch. Even so, Hamilton insisted that the officers' actions were legal and justified.

"The city lawyers are very confident that the force applied was reasonable considering the circumstances, and we feel they were justified in using that restraint," Hamilton said. "We put thousands of people through our cells, and rarely do we have to use that type of restraint."

Kinloch said she decided to tell her story because, at 18, she now feels mature enough to speak publicly. She was also influenced by what happened to Robert Dziekanski, the Polish immigrant who died after RCMP used a Taser gun to subdue him at the Vancouver airport. In that case, as in hers, Kinloch said, the videotape made all the difference.

"If you get assaulted by the police, who are you going to tell? Who is going to believe you? Because it's the police," Kinloch said. "They [the officers involved] are still working and still out there. Who is to say something like this isn't going to happen to one of my kids or [it] could happen to anybody."

Her lawyer, Richard Neary, agreed the tape speaks for itself.

"There are split second gaps in the tape, but there is certainly nothing that is omitted from the tape that would justify what occurred," said Neary. "This happened despite the fact the police officers knew there was a tape running. They knew their actions were being recorded. That's difficult to comprehend on a lot of levels."