‘Race did not play a part’: Watchdog clears officers in arrest of Alberta chief

FORT MCMURRAY, Alta. — Alberta’s police watchdog says there’s no evidence an offence was committed when Mounties tackled a prominent First Nation chief and punched him in the face during an arrest outside a Fort McMurray, Alta., casino in 2020.

The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team also said in a report released Thursday that there’s no evidence of racist treatment by the officers against Allan Adam, who has been chief of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation for about two decades.

“A police officer’s use of force, in law, is not to be assessed on a standard of perfection nor using the benefit of hindsight and the opportunity to consider alternatives with the luxury of time,” ASIRT executive director Michael Ewenson said in the report.

“Under these circumstances, the use of force employed … was necessary to gain control as quickly as possible to try and maintain the safety of both the officers and others present.”

The report said a confrontation began on the evening of March 10, 2020, when a lone officer was patrolling the Boomtown Casino’s parking lot.

The officer saw a truck with an expired registration, parked behind it, turned on his cruiser’s emergency lights, and its dash cam started recording.

The video shows Adam approaching the officer, swearing at him and saying he’s “tired of being harassed by the RCMP,” said the report.

The officer repeatedly tells Adam to return to his truck, and the chief gets in the rear passenger side. The officer then approaches a woman in the driver’s seat, who is later identified as the chief’s wife.

Adam gets out of the truck again, throws down his jacket, takes a ring off his finger and takes a fighting stance, making it “clear that (Adam) was preparing to be physical with the lone officer,” the report said.

The officer calls for backup.

The woman then gets in between her husband and the officer and, after Adam gets back in the truck, she stands in front of the door, said the report. The officer grabs her arm to arrest her, and she yells. Adam gets out of the truck, pushes the officer’s arm away and yells for the officer to leave his wife alone.

The woman gets back in the truck and tries to drive away. The officer blocks the truck and grabs Adam’s arm but the chief pulls away, said the report.

A second officer arrives, tackles Adam to the ground and orders the chief not to resist. Adam is punched in the head and put in a chokehold.

Photos were released at the time of Adam’s bruised and bloodied face. The report says the chief refused help from paramedics.

Adam was arrested and charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a peace officer, but the Crown stayed the charges in court a few months later.

The chief said in a statement Thursday that the report shows ASIRT is “completely broken” and “designed to protect the ability of police to assault and terrorize Indigenous people and other racial minorities.”

“ASIRT’s suggestion that race did not play a factor in the assault is laughable,” Adam said. “These incidents do not occur to wealthy white people in Alberta.”

A spokesman for the RCMP said it would not be commenting on the report.

After his arrest, Adam told reporters his licence plate had expired, but he “felt the situation with (the officer) could have been easily resolved by simply reminding them to renew the tags and letting them take a taxi home.”

The chief also said what happened to him was not unusual or shocking, “as it happens every day to Black, brown, low income and Indigenous people across Canada.”

Ewenson said in the report that the chief’s past interactions with police “as well as complaints from his community members that he was privy to, may have given him a different subjective impression of the incident.”

“He is obviously entitled to his personal beliefs. However, there is nothing in the available evidence that documents any overt language or conduct by the subject officers that would suggest racist treatment.”

The report said audio was also recorded of Adam after he was arrested and sitting in the back of the cruiser. Adam swears, rants about colonization and immigration, and tells police to “go back to their own country,” said the report.

The first officer at the casino, who is South Asian, said in the report that the only person yelling racial slurs was the chief.

“(The) colour of my skin is brown … I conducted that traffic stop based on a very lawful reason, which was the registration was expired,” said the officer.

Ewenson said the force that Mounties used was reasonable.

The second officer heard screaming in the background when he was paged by the first officer, said the report, and the chief wasn’t compliant during the arrest.

It was the punch to the chief’s face that “led (Adam) to cease resisting as much,” and the officers were able to put him in handcuffs, said the report.

It added the two officers didn’t know the chief and had no previous interactions with him.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Dec. 19, 2024.

The Canadian Press