Chinook Centre's Security - Highly Aggressive? You decide.

[RedMileDJ]

First read about it here: https://twitter.com/Crackmacs/status/313520296848138240

Yikes. Whatever happened to cause the altercation, the security guards at @ChinookCentre are ***holes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nCYB3iUhqf0 … #yyc #Calgary

Description from YouTube:

UPDATE: Daniel (the victim) was taken by the police, and released. No charges are being laid. Hopefully that information will be sufficient to make some of the pro-security commenters pause for thought. Daniel's only 'mistake' was to be less than respectful when speaking to security when he was first stopped in the mall.

***NSFW - Language***

NSFW!

[Dion]

I'm hesitant to judge this situation untill "all" the facts are in.

[RedMileDJ]

Originally Posted by Dion

I'm hesitant to judge this situation untill "all" the facts are in.

I tend to agree, but the dude was down on his face...and it looked like one of the security guards was giving him shots to the ribs or kidney.

Hopefully we get to know more soon.

[Pizza]

Looking forward to seeing this on the news tmrw.
hopefully Global or CFCN journalists gets some reactions from CPS

[Northendzone]

So he was just shopping, and then was getting pummelled by the security team?

He clearly receives a few body shots, but that is par for the course when shipping at that mall.....

[Jacks]

If you used that kind of force on a burglar in your house you would be charged.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by Dion

I'm hesitant to judge this situation untill "all" the facts are in.

I agree when you see an altercation that doesn't show everything,a nd you can't tell if the guy just threw a punch at a cop/secruity gaurd etc, and maybe their reaction is justified. But in this case, you can clearly see the victim is safely subdued and receiving shots, and that isn't acceptable for the position they're in.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by Northendzone

So he was just shopping, and then was getting pummelled by the security team?

He clearly receives a few body shots, but that is par for the course when shipping at that mall.....

Why are we so quick to judge when we don't have all the facts. I agree the video looks bad for the security officers, still i'd like to hear what security has to say.

[Northendzone]

Originally Posted by Jacks

If you used that kind of force on a burglar in your house you would be charged.

What?? There has to be a lot more to this story than that video, which looks bad, but if you were being held down by a few guys, why would you not relax a little.

[Pizza]

Originally Posted by Red-Mile-DJ

I tend to agree, but the dude was down on his face...and it looked like one of the security guards was giving him shots to the ribs or kidney.

Hopefully we get to know more soon.

Not to mention the one guard that says "What did you say to me?!?" and charges the guy who already was flat on his face and having 4 guards already on top of him

[RedMileDJ]

Originally Posted by Pizza

Not to mention the one guard that says "What did you say to me?!?" and charges the guy who already was flat on his face and having 4 guards already on top of him

And then had to be pushed back by one guard, removing him from the situation.

Hopefully some security footage comes out and shows everything that happened.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by flameswin

I agree when you see an altercation that doesn't show everything,a nd you can't tell if the guy just threw a punch at a cop/secruity gaurd etc, and maybe their reaction is justified. But in this case, you can clearly see the victim is safely subdued and receiving shots, and that isn't acceptable for the position they're in.

To be clearer, i find it troubling when the guy says he has a shoulder injury and can't put his arm behind his back and that it took 6 rent a cops to subdue him. What lead up to this altercation is what i'd like to know and why they felt they had to use what I deem to be excessive force. Hopefully the media gets a hold of this and does an enquirey to get to the bottom of this.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by Northendzone

What?? There has to be a lot more to this story than that video, which looks bad, but if you were being held down by a few guys, why would you not relax a little.

If a person felt it was unjustified i could see them struggling and cursing out of anger. I suspect it was an uncomfortable postion to be in when you can't breate and someone is kneeling on your back. My instincts would be to struggle too.

[Brannigans Law]

Jesus. That's a tough video to watch. Hard to judge without seeing the whole incident but ... the guy was just laying there yelling in pain and sounded like of weak and pathetic. Did it really take 5 or 6 guys to pin him down and take shots to the guys ribs while he was down??

[Jacks]

Originally Posted by Northendzone

What?? There has to be a lot more to this story than that video, which looks bad, but if you were being held down by a few guys, why would you not relax a little.

Held down and getting punched, from what I saw it looked like his head was hitting the cement a few times also. The guy might be an ahole for all we know but mall security should not be able to use this kind of force.

[Minnie]

I was reading about this somewhere else and someone says that the security guards aren't actually allowed to use this sort of force? That they are to try and detain and phone police to handle the situation. I also read that witnesses are coming forward to back up Daniel's statements, that he did not, in any way, assault the guard who claims Daniel punched him in the face.

Clearly, if he was released without being charged, there was no reason to treat him in that manner to begin with. If the guards don't have a clear reason to detain and are simply pissed that someone didn't give them some level of 'respect' they seem to think they are due, or who spoke rudely to them, they need to get the hell out of the business because that sort of thing is par for the course, so they need to get some thicker skin. As for charges, Daniel should be filing them against those security guards, and Chinook Centre.

There was a similar situation at Children's Hospital, IIRC, and the security guard(s) is/are the ones who ended up being charged and they were also fired from their positions.

I loathe rent-a-cops. I've met precious few of them who weren't jumped up wannabes anxious to prove their 'power' and whose level of braggadocio is unparalled and beyond obnoxious. There are exceptions, obviously, and I've met a few of them, and they are pleasant people.

[Dion]

The media did get a hold of the story and officials from Chinook Centre are reviewing the video.....

Peggy Lim, marketing director for Chinook Centre, said the man was detained before Calgary police arrived.

“Since the incident took place, a partial video recording of the event has surfaced and we will review this footage as part of our standard internal review process,” said Lim.

“Given that we are in the midst of conducting an internal investigation, we must decline any further comment, except to say that we take this matter very seriously and that our priority is to ensure the safety of all patrons, tenants and staff at Chinook Centre.”

Leo Knight, chief operations officer for Paladin Security, watched the video and said it’s difficult to judge if the security guards went too far without knowing all the details of the case.

“You see one officer throwing 2-3 punches when the suspect is on the ground in the struggle. Is it justified? I don’t know. For example, was the suspect biting on one of the officers’ fingers in the pile? We don’t know,’ he said.

“I am loathe to criticize without any context or details. For example, what precipitated the hands-on takedown? Clearly you hear one officer say that the suspect punched him. We don’t see that.”

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/ca...906/story.html

[Dion]

But Dan Doussept plans to take matters further and ask police to investigate potential criminal charges against the security guards whom he said used unnecessary force against him.

“I want to follow up,” the 31-year-old said Sunday. “Why is it that they are allowed to use this type of force?”

Doussept said the incident began when he sat down on an escalator, a security guard told him to stand up, and a verbal argument ensued in a mall vestibule.

Doussept said he then went outside, threw away a coffee cup, and waved goodbye to the guards, who were “about five or six feet” away from him.

“I put my hand up just to wave goodbye, and they charged me,” he said. “They didn’t say we think you’re threatening us, or anything. They just came at me.”

Doussept said he went to a hospital emergency room after the incident with wounds to his face, back and hands.

He said he still had a severe headache on Sunday and worried he may have a concussion.

http://metronews.ca/news/calgary/598...curity-guards/

[puckluck2]

Stupid rent-a-cops.

I don't care what he did, he didn't deserve to be beaten by 5-6 loser high school drop outs.

Rent-a-cops are always the losers that got bullied in school and in life so they try to become someone important but they don't realize they have no more rights than a regular citizen has.

[frinkprof]

There are some factors to these sorts of situations that can make things on the surface appear very negative for the security/police but on further thought might temper that negativity.

1. 4-5+ people subduing one person. This may seem excessive, but it really can take that many people to safely handle another person who is struggling. A grown man who is strong enough, determined enough and perhaps on the right combination of drugs and adrenaline can be a handful to take down and keep down. Even when you have him down, flailing arms and legs can be a danger if there's only one or two people trying to subdue someone. Not saying this was the case here by any stretch. Just saying that 4-5 guys might seem like an excessive amount against one person but it isn't necessarily.

2. The shrieks the guy is putting out from about 1:13 onward and for how long he does so make the situation sound/look really bad and perhaps worse than it really is. Not saying he wasn't in pain or anything, just that the tone, amount and duration of the sounds he is making will give any onlookers/viewers of the video an impression of helpless struggling based on an emotional response and will induce sympathy. Just something about the particular noises he makes. Again, it may be legitimate suffering, but objectively you can't let the type of sounds he is making be an indicator of severity or appropriateness of the actions. Maybe the sounds of pain are exacerbated by the injured shoulder. That alone doesn't mean that a takedown isn't warranted, just that the takedown will be extra unpleasant for the person being taken down. The officers can't reasonably be expected to know about an injured shoulder when first responding to whatever situation this stemmed from.

3. The "quit smashing my face" calls by the person could be legitimate, but it could be that through his struggles his face is contacting the concrete or the boots, knees, etc. of the officers. We don't know if the officers are striking his face (the one officer is striking him somewhere, see below for my thoughts on that, but it may not be his face). It could all be incidental. Again, the words "smashing face" induces an emotional response from onlookers and viewers. Hard to tell if that's what's actually happening though.

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Just a couple things that I think should be kept in mind. Not siding with anyone really yet. Way too little information, context and a small recorded sample size to make judgements on.

The biggest thing to me is them striking him with punches while he's down at 0.35. I think that's the most clear case of wrongdoing based on the video. The guy being taken away by his colleague/supervisor and then another person rushing into the scene look bad too. Ultimately it seems nothing (physical) came of that though.