For Chase Richards, the worst part was not when a police officer “cornered him like an animal” on a TTC bus in December 2019, when the officer grabbed his throat and it was difficult for him to breathe, or when the officer forced him to throw to the ground. and knelt on his back with all his weight.
Instead, Richards testified Tuesday, that’s when Det. Christopher Hutchings leaned back in the bus seat and placed his feet on Richards’s back as he lay face down on the ground, his hands handcuffed behind his back.
As that long section of the bus safety video played in court, Richards, 40, said he didn’t want to see any more.
“I’ll answer your questions, but I don’t want to see this,” he told Crown. “Nobody deserves that,” he said, then added, “I never thought people would go out of their way to make you feel like you are less than you are because of the color of your skin.”
Hutchings is on trial on the charge of assaulting Richards, a black man, on a Scarborough bus on December 13, 2019. The crown, Roger Shallow, argues that Hutchings’ actions amount to “excessive” force.
Hutchings’ attorney, Peter Brauti, said Tuesday that other eyewitness accounts will show a very different version of events, including that Richards was being belligerent and aggressive with the bus driver and officers, and wanted to “create a conflict.” all that Richards denied Tuesday.
Brauti said that as Richards was getting off the bus to go to the police station, he was smiling and laughing and told officers, “I’m going to do this like Trayvon Martin” and referred to other “social justice cases related to the race”. “Richards unequivocally denied making such a reference, including to Martin, a 17-year-old black teenager who was shot and killed by a member of the neighborhood guard while walking home to Florida in 2013, sparking international outrage over the profiling. racial and police violence against blacks.
Richards also rejected Brauti’s claim that he told officers: “This is perfect, now you are going to pay me, motherfuckers.”
When asked by the Crown what he said to officers as he got off the bus, Richards testified that he asked if Hutchings was Italian, because he thought he looked Italian. He said he also told Hutchings that he didn’t deserve to be a police officer.
“The only racial comment that was made in this case, the only one who behaved like a racist was you,” Brauti said during questioning. “You said to my client, are you Italian, and he said yes? And you said ‘then you don’t deserve to be an official.’
TTC surveillance video shows the Toronto police detective in plain clothes. Christopher Hutchings grabbed and arrested Chase Richards shortly after arriving on the scene on December 13, 2019. Hutchings has pleaded not guilty to assaulting Richards. Hutchings and his partner Det. Jason Tanouye, gray jacket, faces separate obstruction of justice charges for the same incident.
On Tuesday Richards testified that before getting on the bus he was with friends in a bar, which Brauti noted was different from his earlier testimony that he had been in a restaurant with his girlfriend.
Richards testified that he boarded the TTC bus near Markham and Ellesmere highways around 8:30 p.m. from the back entrance and paid by tapping his Presto card. He said the bus driver called him to the front of the bus and said he should have gotten in the front. He said the bus driver was wrongly accusing him of failing to pay for his fare, an accusation he believed was racially motivated, and said the bus driver told him to stay away because he smelled of cigarette smoke.
Brauti said the testimony of the bus driver will be that there was never a dispute over fares. He told Richards that he shouldn’t board in the back of the bus and Richards started arguing with him. When Richards refused to move behind the white line, the bus driver eventually pulled the bus from service and called the police to report a disorderly customer.
“It has nothing to do with being black, it is because you will not stay behind the white line,” said Brauti.
Richards disagreed. “You’re trying to make (the driver) look like a nice guy who did his job professionally,” he said.
Surveillance video on the bus has no audio and only shows Richards standing next to the bus driver as they speak. The bus driver eventually puts him out of service. Other passengers get off the bus, but Richards remains. Hutchings and his partner, both in plain clothes, were the first to arrive.
Richards testified that the first thing Hutchings said to him was, “Is this the son of a bitch causing the ruckus?”
“I said, ‘I’m not a son of a bitch because I paid for my ticket,'” Richards said in response. He said he didn’t remember what the officer said after that, only that he started “getting his hands on me.”
Richards said he told Hutchings that he couldn’t breathe when Hutchings had his hand on his neck, which video shows lasted 30 seconds.
He said he couldn’t breathe as Hutchings forced him to the ground and knelt on his “upper back.”
Brauti told the court Tuesday that he disputes that Hutchings put his hand on Richards’s throat, or that Richards couldn’t breathe when Hutchings was kneeling on his back and holding his hands while waiting for the handcuffs.
Richards said that while he was face down on the floor he was trying to spit on the floor, but his mouth was too dry and it just came out as a foam. He said Hutchings told him it would be another position.
Brauti suggested that Hutchings used his feet to keep Richards face down on the floor so he wouldn’t spit at officers, which Richards said was not true. He said he never tried to spit at officers and said he only moved to ease his pain, including in his calf.
Hutchings, a 24-year veteran of the Toronto Police Force, was charged with assault in January 2020, following an internal investigation by the Toronto Police Professional Standards Unit. Seven months later, that unit filed additional charges stemming from Richard’s arrest: Det. Jason Tanouye, Hutchings’ partner that night, was also charged with assault and both he and Hutchings were charged with attempting to obstruct justice.
According to a court document outlining the charges against Hutchings and Tanouye, it is alleged that both officers made a false or misleading account of Richards’s arrest in their notebooks, sometime between the arrest on December 13, 2019 and on December 29. January 2020. A separate trial has been scheduled for next year.
The trial continues.
Reference-www.thestar.com