Vancouver police update handcuffing policy

The Vancouver Police Department (VPD) says it has updated its handcuffing policy to include considerations around age, ethnicity, and the seriousness of the alleged incident before an officer can restrain a person.

The update announced April 7, will also require a police officer to have “lawful authority that is objectively reasonable, is proportionate to the potential risk of harm the officer faces, and is necessary to fulfil a legitimate policing objective” before handcuffs are applied.

“A focal point of the policy is that Vancouver Police officers must be able to articulate the specific circumstance necessitating the use of handcuffs to restrain a person,” the VPD said in an email Friday.

The force says the updated policy includes “strategic improvements.”

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One is that an officer who uses force on the job “is legally responsible for the force applied,” and can’t view handcuffing “as a routine action.”

Another is that an officer who places handcuffs “must have lawful authority” to do so, and must also consider whether that action is necessary in order to protect against harm, prevent a suspect from leaving, find and preserve evidence related to the person’s arrest, or facilitate a search of the person being detained.

Meanwhile, in addition to considering a person’s age, ethnicity, and the seriousness of the alleged incident, the policy states officers must also consider a person’s medical condition, injuries, their size, and “whether they are part of other equity deserving groups.”

High-profile incidents

According to the VPD, the policy was last reviewed in January 2020. The updated policy came into effect in October of the following year.

That came after Selwyn Romilly, the first Black judge named to the BC Supreme Court, was wrongly detained in Stanley Park in May 2021. Police at the time said they were looking for a man who was causing a disturbance and matched a similar description to Romilly, who was 81 years old.

Romilly said when officers realized they had the wrong man, they apologized and removed the cuffs, though he added it “wasn’t sufficient enough to keep me from being embarrassed.”

The 2020 review came after an Indigenous man and his granddaughter, who was 12 at the time, were handcuffed after they tried to open an account at a Vancouver Bank of Montreal (BMO). In this case, a BMO employee called Vancouver police claiming Maxwell Johnson his granddaughter, both members of the Heiltsuk Nation, had produced fraudulent Indian Status cards.

Maxwell Johnson and his 12-year-old granddaughter are handcuffed by police outside a Bank of Montreal branch in downtown Vancouver on Dec. 20, 2019. (Courtesy Union of BC Indian Chiefs)

Following the 2020 handcuff policy review, the Heiltsuk Nation said it was concerned that it had not been consulted for the report, with Chief Councillor Marilyn Slett adding she should have been involved in the process given the “traumatic experience” prompted the review.

With files from Martin MacMahon, Robyn Crawford, and Renee Bernard