PAGC and police reserving comments on closed door meeting

Details of a meeting Tuesday involving members of the Prince Albert Police Service, and Prince Albert Grand Council (PAGC), are being kept behind closed doors for the time being.

The meeting was called for by PAGC Grand Chief Brian Hardlotte, in response to a video which was posted the previous Friday in a Facebook group.

The video showed the arrest of two men outside a West Hill business earlier that night. At one point in the video, one of the men gets taken down, and is lying face down on the concrete while being handcuffed,

Bystanders in the video in the short 90-second video can be overheard scolding the officers for their tactics.

“He didn’t do nothing,” one man said.

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“Don’t do that,” the woman added.

At one point, the officer, after securing the suspect, can be heard commenting back to one of the bystanders, “yeah so why is he fighting me.”

In a previous statement, Hardlotte said PAGC was “disturbed” by the use of force used by the officer.

“It is hard to see our Indigenous people treated aggressively like this, and I have serious questions about what happened and why it happened this way,” he said.

paNOW has learned Tuesday’s meeting lasted roughly two hours, and in addition to Police Chief Jon Bergen and Grand Chief Brian Hardlotte, also included at least one elder and Mayor Greg Dionne.

Spokespersons for both PAGC and the police service have indicated to paNOW that a joint statement will be issued next week.

According to a statement Monday by police, officers were called to the 200 Block of 32^nd St. W for a report of a man attempting to fight multiple people in the area. paNOW has obtained a video taken by another bystander at the scene, which shows at least three men involved in a fight outside the doors of the Tim Horton’s restaurant.

The man, who was later taken to the ground by the police officer, can be seen in this video, trying to initiate a fight with another man, even throwing a wild kick into the air.

The names of the men involved have not been released, or what charges they face, if any.

The woman who recorded the video of the two men fighting declined paNOW’s request for an interview.

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nigel.maxwell@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @nigelmaxwell