A judge has made a not guilty ruling for a Prince Albert police officer who was charged with assault after she pepper sprayed a man who’d been arrested last summer.
Inmate Gabe Ross was about a foot away from Constable Susan Snell, and already lodged in a cell, when this happened in July of 2014. Snell had been on the other side of cell’s door, but the cell has a small opening in the door.
At issue was whether Snell sprayed him to punish him for unruly behavior. Crown prosecutor Bryce Pashovitz suggested that’s exactly why she did it, but defence lawyer Aaron Fox argued Snell sprayed as a way to keep Ross from spitting on her.
In Ross’s own testimony, he admitted to being intoxicated and belligerent that night. His arresting officers – who had picked Ross up for public intoxication – described Ross kicking the police car’s rear window, breaking free from leg restraints after officers had put them on, hitting his head against objects in the car, and spitting while inside the car.
While in the cell block that night, Ross could be heard yelling obscenities and kicking or hitting items once in his cell. This is based on the sounds in video from the police cells.
At trial, Snell testified she approached his cell thinking that using a lower voice and tone in a face-to-face conversation would calm him down. Video and audio evidence was consistent with those facts. Snell had already drawn her pepper spray, but not visible to Ross, when she approached the cell in anticipation that Ross might spit – something Snell said she’s done before. Spitting at someone is considered assault, and people are legally entitled to self-defense in that situation, Fox argued.
The Crown had argued that Ross had not been making motions to spit. This was based on her actions up to and after the moment she sprayed being inconsistent with how other officers deal with being spit at. For example, she did not notify the active sergeant, staff sergeants, or her coworkers. Snell’s first admission of using the spray came after the staff sergeant radio’d asking who had sprayed Ross, since the inmate had complained about it. Snell also didn’t follow decontamination protocols with Ross once she’d sprayed, even though she said she will to her superior.
Finally, the Crown had argued Snell’s attitude in the minutes after the incident, where she could be seen in video walking down the hallway and washing her hands, were indicative of punitive behavior. Judge S. Anand interjected, saying at the least Snell’s actions were callous and at the worst they were negligent.
Fox acknowledged that Snell’s decisions to try to de-escalate Ross’s behavior by talking to him are up for debate. However he argued that once Snell was in the situation where she was close to the prisoner and she believed he was going to spit, her reaction was within legal bounds.
While Anand agreed that there was nothing criminal in Snell’s actions in his acquittal, Anand said Snell’s judgment calls that night were at times “very misguided,” and that approaching Ross’s cell was a “high-risk maneuver.” Anand said she should have promptly notified her superior after she sprayed Ross, noting that Snell, a police officer with 20 years of service, should have done so as a matter of common sense.
Anand finished his ruling by saying that some of Snell’s actions may have violated Prince Albert Police Services protocol, but Prince Albert Provincial Court is not the right venue for her actions to be punished.
Snell hugged those accompanying her when the ruling was handed down.
Snell had been charged in December after an independent investigation of the incident by the province’s public complaints commission. Anand noted during the trial that those investigators had been incorrectly informed about which cell the incident occurred in, meaning photos from that file were of the wrong area of the Prince Albert Police Services cell block.
Snell has been off duty, on paid administrative leave, since she was charged.