Police watchdog investigating after boy's arm fractured during arrest over suspected fare evasion: 'Miss, what did I do?' - Toronto Star

Five teens were arrested after three of the boys told the Star they paid their fares but were aggressively targeted by Toronto police officers.

Screen images from a video circulating on social media of a physical altercation between several teenagers and police officers at a TTC station. 

Three teens suffered injuries, including a fractured arm, after they were accused of evading TTC fares at Finch West station and forcibly taken to the ground and charged by Toronto police officers, in a case that is now being reviewed by the province’s police watchdog.

The Star spoke with three of the boys who were charged after the after the Oct. 7 incident with assaulting a peace officer and, in some cases, obstructing justice, as well as with their parents.

All three boys say they paid their fares but that after one of them was accused by an officer of trespassing and detained, the others questioned the arrest, surrounding officers, and then were also forced to the ground and handcuffed. All of them denied assaulting the officers.

Two other boys were arrested after the incident. None of the teens can be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

“They have no proof of these kids not paying,” one boy’s father told the Star in an interview, saying he mentors the boys through basketball and that none of them are “trouble-makers.”

Even if the boys didn’t pay their fares, the father said, it doesn’t justify the physical takedowns, including that of his son, who he said weighs 100 pounds and experienced swelling around his knee after his arrest.

“You guys are going to rush a 15-year-old like that over three dollars?”

The 14-year-old boy first accused by police spoke with the Star alongside his mother at their home in North York. The Star has viewed a copy of his hospital records, which state his humeral head — the ball-shaped part of the upper arm bone — was fractured.

Three teens suffered injuries, including a fractured arm, after they were accused of evading TTC fares at Finch West station and forcibly taken to the ground and arrested by Toronto police officers.

Toronto police responded to questions from the Star with a statement that said there were “ongoing concerns about behaviour involving groups of young people at the station” and that police “have been working with the TTC to address them.” An earlier press release said “several youths were manipulating the entrance gates to enter without paying.”

“The public expects police to respond when problems arise in our transit system, and that’s exactly what our officers were doing,” police spokesperson Stephanie Sayer wrote in an email. “While people are entitled to question police actions, that does not give anyone the right to physically interfere with an arrest or assault an officer.”

Both police and the Special Investigations Unit have confirmed that the incident is now subject to an independent investigation by the provincial police watchdog, which has a mandate to review incidents involving police officers during which members of the public are seriously injured, including fractures.

The 14-year-old boy who spoke to the Star said he saw uniformed officers along with TTC special constables as he and his friends descended into the station on an escalator that Wednesday afternoon.

The station was busy after school and filled with teens and other commuters. He said he saw one person jump a fare gate before running away. He said no one chased after that person.

After tapping their phones and entering the paid area of the station, the boy said, a female officer approached him and said they were trespassing and that if they didn’t leave they would all be arrested.

The boy said the officer reached out for his arm and he responded: “You cannot touch me.”

The officer, he said, grabbed his arm and put his hand behind his back as another officer approached with handcuffs.

Videos of the incident provided by the boys and their families and those posted on social media capture the ensuing struggle.

None of the videos show the events leading up to the boys’ first contact with officers. Neither the TTC nor the police responded to questions of whether the boys’ entrance into the station was captured on surveillance footage.

Throughout one of the longer videos, there is ongoing physical contact between two involved police officers and several of the boys — both those arrested and those who were not.

One begins with the 14-year-old boy, the female officer holding his arm behind his back, pressed up against a barrier as several boys surround them, shouting. One teen clings to his friend from the other side of the gate in a standoff with officers.

The shouting continues as one of the officers moves her arm in a chopping motion toward the arms of the boys holding on to the detained teen. The officers pull the boy toward a corner of the station, where a male officer steps his leg out behind the boy’s left leg, as though to trip him. The boy stumbles backwards as the officer holds him, forcing him to the ground as other teens surround them. At one point, the hand of at least one teen appears to reach out to the officer’s upper arm and the officer swipes toward them as he holds the 14-year-old down.

The boy, face down on the ground with his backpack covering his head, is handcuffed as the other teens continue to protest.

“They just put everyone on the floor,” the teen recalled of his and his friends’ subsequent arrests.

Handcuffed on the floor, the boy said, he was trying to get the female officer’s attention. He said he tapped her leg with his foot, asking, “Miss, miss, what did I do?”

He said the officer told him: “‘That’s assault. You can’t touch an officer.’”

The officer later cut his Nike Elite backpack off him, dumping out his belongings before charging him with assaulting a peace officer.

The boy said he complained that his shoulder and neck were hurting and an ambulance was called. He was released to his mother in the ambulance and they travelled to a nearby hospital.

His mother said since then, police officers visited their home to inform them of a change in court dates, which she said added insult to injury.

Screen images from a video circulating on social media of a physical altercation between several teenagers and police officers at a TTC station. 

“I don’t want police to come around my neighbourhood. I don’t want that kind of attention, because he’s not that kind of child,” she said of her basketball-loving son whom she kept home from school and out of practice following the arrest.

“He has to get justice. They can’t get away with it.”

One of the other teens the Star spoke with said he was with his friend when the boy was suddenly grabbed by a police officer.

“They didn’t say nothing,” the teen said in an interview. “They were just trying to arrest him for no reason.”

The boy said he could see his friend was in distress and was trying to help him when he was grabbed by officers and slammed to the floor. Face down, he was also handcuffed.

The boy said his wrist was injured — results of an X-ray were still pending — his eye was swollen and his ribs were hurting.

The boy had never been arrested before.

His mother said she hopes the charges against her son will be dropped.

The third boy the Star spoke to told a similar story of the boys entering the station.

“They started putting their hands on us,” the boy said, confirming they had all tapped their phones to pay.

He said during the incident, the same male officer that arrested the 14-year-old boy kicked him in the knee.

After he began walking away from the chaos, the boy said the female officer called for his arrest. A woman can be heard telling fellow officers to “get him” in a video viewed by the Star. The same video shows the boy being held by at least three officers at one point and the male officer he accused of having kicked him earlier holding him by the neck before also taking him to the ground.

He described his experience as “traumatizing.”

Asked about commenters saying the boys deserved to be arrested on videos circulating online, the teen said they don’t show the whole event.

“I feel like people shouldn’t question and assume stuff because they weren’t there,” he said.

His father, who questioned the takedowns, told the Star he feels it was the cops that “did the majority of the assault” and that his son did not assault any of the officers.

“These kids have never even been in a situation like this,” the father said, adding his son was trying to stick up for his friend.

“Now these kids’ futures (are) getting jeopardized.”

Jennifer Pagliaro is a Toronto-based crime reporter for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @jpags.