A Vancouver police officer has been criminally charged for an incident in which he allegedly kicked an indigenous man outside the Cordova Street Jail last year.
The BC Prosecutor’s Office confirmed on Wednesday that Const. Riley Emerson Robert Wiens had been charged with one count of assault for the March 20, 2021 incident.
Global News previously reported that the incident was captured on multiple security cameras.
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Sources said the alleged victim was a man in his 50s who had been jailed for several hours on a charge of public intoxication.
The alleged victim had a few words with a VPD officer who was returning to his vehicle when the officer kicked him in the chest, sending him backward against a pole, sources told Global News.
The man hit his head and fell to the ground, and the officer walked away with his partner without providing assistance, the sources told Global News.
A woman at the bus stop across the street came to the man’s aid and, seeing his head bleeding, called 911, sources said. He was taken to the hospital by ambulance.
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A Vancouver Police Department spokesman said Wiens had been assigned to non-operational duties and a separate Police Act investigation had been put on hold pending the outcome of the criminal case. The VPD said it could not comment further while the matter was before the courts.
Wiens received a police chief citation last year for an incident in 2020 when he and 15 other officers suffered smoke inhalation while evacuating residents from an apartment building where a man with a knife and chain barricaded himself inside and began to set fire to items.
Wiens is scheduled for her first court appearance on August 15.
— with Catherine Urquhart files
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