A man who witnessed an alleged assault by Vancouver police on an Indigenous man in front of his baby daughter said the child received minor head abrasions as a result.
Alex Mountain, 50, told Glacier Media he was on a bus heading home into East Vancouver with his daughter on Aug. 26 when someone called the Vancouver Police Department (VPD) because the baby was crying.
He said got off the bus to find multiple police officers, one of whom stopped him.
He said he told an officer he had done nothing wrong and that they couldn’t hold him.
“That’s when he slammed me onto the ground,” he said.
He said the stroller then went flying and his seven-month-old flew out of it.
He said he and a female officer both caught the child.
“I would never let my daughter fall out of her stroller,” the member of Vancouver Island’s KwAGiulth Nation said.
Sean Veley, a Vancouver performer who goes by the name Myth, told Glacier Media he was on the bus with Mountain.
Veley said problems began earlier on the bus when a female passenger boarded and insisted on talking to everyone, including Mountain and a man with a dog.
He said “the woman wouldn’t stop talking” despite several requests for her to stop. Veley said the passenger just rebuked those requests.
The witness said tempers were frayed on the bus due to her behaviour.
Veley said at one point the woman “called out 911.”
Mountain’s partner Mary Duncan said the woman had told him he wasn’t capable of taking care of a baby.
The bus soon stopped and an officer came onto the bus and asked Mountain to get off.
“One officer quickly turned into six or seven,” he said.
It was shortly after that the stroller tipped, Veley said.
“I can’t say definitively who tipped it but the child did have a very light abrasion up on the top right of her forehead,” Veley said.
As that happened, he said, Mountain was trying to get his child back into the stroller while police "were giving him a bit of a hassle."
“Throughout the whole thing, he’s handcuffed and trying to take care of his baby.”
Veley said the woman on the bus was not arrested or detained.
“It felt like a very unreasonable response to the situation,” he said.
VPD spokesman Sgt. Steve Addison told Glacier Media Aug. 28 police received a 911 call Saturday afternoon from a woman who saw a baby fall out of a stroller and strike the ground near Commercial Drive and Kitchener Street.
“The witness reported that the baby was crying, that the baby’s father appeared frustrated, and that the baby’s father was struggling with the child,” Addison said.
“Believing there was a potential child in danger, we immediately sent officers to investigate.”
He said the man was cuffed because he was being defiant.
“We have referred the matter to (the Ministry of Children and Family Development) for review,” Addison said.
