By Sarah Mills

Regina mother stands by story alleging police abuse

Jan 6, 2015 | 3:55 PM

Two very different versions are emerging since Regina police officers were accused in a Facebook post of mistreating a woman.

Regina police said on Monday that two officers were called out to Avonhurst Drive at just before 5 a.m. on Monday.  It had been reported two women were drunk and banging on a door outside an apartment building. The officers found two women they say were intoxicated – a 16-year-old and a 25-year-old.

Lisa Dustyhorn made the Facebook post after her daughter, 25-year-old Brooke Watson, was in police custody. Dustyhorn is sticking to her story.

She alleges her daughter, who has cognitive disabilities, was driven in a police cruiser with all heating and equipment turned off.

In the Facebook post she writes, “my daughter was taken last night by 2 male Regina police officers and taken out of town and tortured by police. They traumatized my daughter and took her boots n coats and threatened to drop her off outside of Regina to die. My daughter begged for her life and then they threw her in jail cells.”

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Dustyhorn maintains the two male police officers took her outside of city limits near to the Regina Correctional Centre on Highway 46. At some point they turned around and she alleges only when they were back within the city did the heating and equipment come back on.

“She kept saying she didn’t want to die”, says Dustyhorn. “She goes please, take me back, take me back, I don’t wanna die”. Dustyhorn adds she was fearful for her life.

“She felt isolated and afraid. She says please don’t leave me out here”.

But in a scrum with reporters Regina Police Chief Troy Hagen tells a different version. He has now had a chance to look at all the IT involved.

“I can tell you with a 100 per cent degree of confidence that the vehicle did not leave the city of Regina”, he maintains.
 
In a release on Monday, police confirmed no device inside police cruisers, including the GPS can be turned off. 
 
But Hagen did add the jail is not the first option. Officers will often drive a drunk person around to sober up and learn a safe address they can be taken. And he contends in this case the GPS is consistent with that. 
 
“I am not going to say exactly where the GPS was”, he says. “It was in residential areas and she was not taken out of town”.

The police said on Monday that a video recorded in the detention area shows the woman came into the police building with no shoes or jacket. Once she sobered up, she was released and given everything she had on her when she came in.

Dustyhorn says both she and her daughter are suffering anxiety and panic attacks and her daughter has been unable to return to her apartment on Avonhurst Drive where all of this began.
 
The case is now in the hands of the Public Complaints Commission. The Regina Police Service has the officers’ reports and radio communication as well as the GPS data from their vehicle. It also has audio and video recordings from the detention area. All that documentation is being handed over to the Public Complaints Commission.

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