Mounties cleared the arrest of Chief Allan Adam

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

The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team also said in a report released Thursday that there is 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 should not, in law, be judged by a standard of perfection or by 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 … was necessary to gain control as quickly as possible to try to 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 parking lot.

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

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

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

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

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

Another officer arrives, tackles Adam to the ground and orders the chief not to resist. Adam is hit in the head and put in a choke hold.

Pictures 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 sustained the charges in court a few months later.

Adam was not immediately available for comment. An RCMP spokesman said it would not comment on the report.

After his arrest, Adam told reporters that his license plate had expired, but he “felt the situation with (the officer) could have easily been resolved by simply reminding them to renew the tags and letting them take a cab 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 aboriginal people across Canada.”

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

“Obviously, he is entitled to his personal beliefs. However, there is nothing in the available evidence that documents any overt language or behavior by the officers investigated that suggests 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, talks about colonization and immigration and tells the police to “go back to their own country,” the report said.

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

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

Ewenson said the force the Mounties used was reasonable.

The second officer heard screams in the background as he was searched by the first officer, the report said, and the chief was not compliant during the arrest.

It was the punch to the chief’s face that “led (Adam) to stop resisting so much” and officers were able to handcuff him, the report said.

It added that the two officers did not know the chief and had no previous interactions with him.

This report from The Canadian Press was first published on December 19, 2024