The Abdirahman Abdi inquest is being livestreamed during the day here. It will resume on Monday, Dec. 16, at 12:30 p.m.
Deputy Chief Steve Bell says the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) has made a number of changes since the 2016 death of Abdirahman Abdi, but more work needs to be done — including repairing the police service’s “very fractured” relationship with the local Somali community.
Abdi, a 38-year-old Somali-Canadian man who struggled with his mental health, died on July 25, 2016, a day after his violent arrest by two Ottawa police officers.
A coroner’s inquest that began on Nov. 18 has been hearing about circumstances of Abdi’s death and its fallout.
Testifying on Friday, Bell was the final witness before inquest lawyers make their final submissions on Monday.
A jury of five Ottawa-area civilians will then decide on recommendations meant to prevent deaths like Abdi’s in the future.
‘We can always do more’
Near the end of his testimony, Bell addressed what he called the OPS’s “very fractured” relationship with local Somalis and pledged to do his part to repair it.
“That is a vitally important connection we have much more work to do on,” he said, noting Ottawa has the second-largest Somali population in North America.
“I think they want to be able to identify that the police are making progress on issues that are important to them, and my understanding is they don’t feel that we’ve done that yet.”
Much of Bell’s testimony focused on the steps the police service has taken to change its approach to emergency calls like the one involving Abdi.
Abdi was behaving erratically on the morning of his arrest, and dispatchers were told of potential mental health issues. It was tagged as a sexual assault call because of reports Abdi had groped several women.
Unbeknownst to the officers who dealt with him that day, Abdi had shown signs of schizophrenia earlier that month and was likely in the throes of a psychotic episode affecting his perception of reality, according to an expert psychiatrist who testified at the inquest.
Bell said the force is continually refining its training on de-escalation, anti-Black racism and crisis intervention.
“We can always do more, but we’ve made a concerted effort around training in our organization around racial issues,” he said.
“I don’t think we’ve seen the drop that we had hoped to in the disproportional numbers [of racialized people involved in use-of-force incidents]. And that’s why … it’s going to be important for us to make sure we have the most effective training.”
OPS’s mental health unit will grow its ranks next year, and the force’s communications centre will get new training on collecting information during mental health calls, among other changes.
WATCH / The death of Abdirahman Abdi: Here’s what you need to know:
WARNING: This video contains graphic content | Eight years after Abdirahman Abdi died following a violent struggle with Ottawa police, a coroner’s inquest is bringing the event back into the spotlight. Here’s what you need to know.
‘We’re not an occupying army’
The inquest has heard the plastic-knuckled gloves worn by the constable who punched Abdi in the head were ordered — without any oversight — by a supervisor who had used them while serving with the military in Afghanistan.
Inquest lawyer Maria Stevens said she was concerned “a military-style context was part of a supervisor’s thought process.”
“We aren’t a military, we’re not an occupying army. We actually have a very different role in community safety,” Bell said.
Bell was also asked about the force’s assessment of the first aid officers gave Abdi, which did not include CPR, and whether OPS should come up with a standard definition for what kind of care officers should provide.
He cautioned against a one-size-fits-all definition.
“First aid in this instance would be very different from first aid in a traffic collision or in any other circumstance that we may be involved in,” he said.
Internal review flagged video
The OPS conducted its own internal review into the Abdi arrest, but a report summarizing its findings was never sent to the force’s civilian-led oversight board, as required by law.
“Quite simply, I think we made an error [there],” Bell said, adding that changeover in chiefs of police and the Ottawa Police Services Board played a role in the report’s slipping through the cracks.
That internal review, known as a Section 11 review, went way beyond its normal parameters.
“Section 11 looks specifically at an incident,” Bell said. “What [former chief Peter] Sloly was looking at including was the systemic issues that we’ve identified through this and changes that we were looking to make.”
The report OPS produced from the Section 11 review looked at a “warrior mindset” in policing, as well as a video shown to some Ottawa officers receiving use-of-force training in 2016, the same year Abdi died.
The video is a sensationalist montage of violent clashes between police and civilians, set to a pep talk given to a football team by Al Pacino’s coach character in the film Any Given Sunday.
No one at the inquest has been able to explain why the video was shown, though it has been roundly criticized by inquest participants and the internal review as inappropriate.
“It had no business being in our training material,” Bell said, adding: “We’re continuing to take steps to remove anything that could contribute to bias within our organization.”