Arrest and Detention

• Three RCMP officers attended a family residence in response to a report that a husband was upset and had been verbally abusing his wife for several hours. The RCMP confirmed that, while he had not physically assaulted her, the husband had been verbally abusive toward his wife and that she appeared to fear for her safety. The officers concluded that without their intervention the abusive behaviour would most likely continue and they arrested the man for breach of the peace. The RCMP held him at the detachment overnight and drove him back to his home the next day. The man complained about several aspects of the RCMP conduct in this incident, including that his arrest was improper.

The CPC found that none of his complaints were substantiated. The spousal abuse protocol in the provincial jurisdiction where this incident took placed defines spousal abuse as violence or threats of violence or other acts of a criminal nature that may include physical, sexual, emotional or psychological abuse committed against a person by that person's spouse, past or present. The protocol requires the RCMP in that jurisdiction, after receiving complaints of such behaviour by a spouse, to take immediate action to give greater protection to women by intervening early before abusive behaviour escalates into physical violence. The CPC thus concluded that the officer's actions in arresting and detaining the husband pursuant to the protocol were proper.