On June 23, at about 10:20 pm, someone called the 911 dispatch in New Brunswick to report a disturbance in progress at an apartment in Sackville. At about that same time, Chelsea McKenney and Justin Baird were settling in for the night, after putting their 6-year-old son to bed. Within about half an hour, McKenney would find herself handcuffed and sitting in the back of a police cruiser, after having been tackled and arrested in her own hallway.
The incident in McKenney and Baird’s apartment on June 23 has had several repercussions. McKenney herself has filed a formal complaint with the independent agency known as the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP. She is also working with Nova Scotia-based organization PathLegal to file a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. At the same time, she is facing criminal charges of resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. The 31-year-old mother of two has been denied legal aid, and is now considering whether to appeal that decision, represent herself, or somehow find money to pay a lawyer. She is due back in Moncton provincial court to enter a plea on January 3.
Hear this story as reported on Tantramar Report:
What happened on June 23?
The incident began with a 911 call for what police called a “disturbance in progress.” McKenney and Baird believe the call was either outright false or a noise complaint blown out of proportion. The couple’s 6-year-old son has non-verbal autism, and is prone to outbursts or banging. It’s something their landlord, Debbie Johnstone of Birchwood Holdings, is aware of. In a letter of support submitted with McKenney’s complaint to the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, Johnstone wrote that she always informed incoming tenants of [the child’s autism], as she didn’t want any problems for the family.
Despite Johnstone’s efforts, McKenney says she did receive routine messages from a neighbour complaining of noises and banging, and she responded regularly, informing them of her’s son’s autism, and the fact that he sometimes makes banging noises. About a week the incident, McKenney had had enough of the repeated messages, and blocked one of her neighbours from further messaging.
For McKenney and Baird, the night of June 23 started out to be relatively uneventful. The couple’s oldest child was spending the night elsewhere, and after putting their youngest to bed, the couple retreated to their bedroom where Baird started playing a video game and McKenney cracked open a vodka soda, and started scrolling her phone to see whom she might like to call. Then they heard a knock at the door.
Baird went into the hall, answered the door, and spoke to Sackville RCMP Constable Mathieu Daigle. According to Baird, the officer told him he was there in response to a complaint of a disturbance in progress at Baird and McKenney’s residence. Baird says he was confused about what Daigle told him, and questioned the officer about the nature of the complaint. “I was prying for information to see, like, what was actually going on here? Because it didn’t make any sense,” Baird told CHMA.
A minute or two after Daigle arrived, Chelsea McKenney came out of the bedroom and joined the conversation. McKenney says when she saw Daigle in her apartment, her first reaction was to wonder if either she or her partner had left their ID somewhere in town. “At that moment I wasn’t really scared because I’m like, this has to be something so small,” recalls McKenney.
When Baird informed her of the disturbance complaint, the two exchanged looks of disbelief, telling Constable Daigle that nothing was out of the ordinary, and that someone must have made a false report. The two suspected their neighbours of making the 911 call, and told Daigle about noise complaints made in the past. According to McKenney, that’s when Daigle said something to the effect of, “by the look on your face, it looks like you’re lying.”
Baird recalls that Daigle had been “pretty insistent” that something was amiss at their home, asking repeatedly what was going on, looking in the living room and their son’s room, and finding nothing out of order.
McKenney says she then asked to move the conversation to the building hallway so as not to wake her son. There, McKenney knocked on two neighbouring doors, making contact with neighbour and acquaintance Kiara Bubar, who agreed to serve as a witness. Bubar, who had no knowledge of anything that had taken place up till then, says McKenney was agitated and upset, and that Daigle was stern.
McKenney admits to having had a drink or two that evening, but says she was not drunk. She was, however, panicking and afraid. Bubar noted that McKenney appeared nervous and that she had had something to drink, but also that McKenney, “didn’t seem so intoxicated that she would be out of control… She wasn’t like slurring her words or stumbling.”
In the hall, Daigle asked McKenney basic questions, like her name and birthdate. Bubar describes the interaction as “tense”. Both Bubar and McKenney say that Daigle then said he would be going back into McKenney’s apartment to speak with Baird. Bubar recalls McKenney saying, “no, that’s not okay. I’m not okay with that.” McKenney also recalls telling Daigle not to go back into her apartment.
McKenney then ran back into her apartment, and Bubar says Daigle “bolted after her.” At that point Bubar says she could hear a commotion, but no longer see what was going on.
Baird, meanwhile, was still inside the apartment.
“And that’s when the officer tackles her from behind,” recalls Baird. McKenney recalls it this way: “He came up behind me and literally just tackled me. Like, he literally took me to the ground. He ripped the entire back of my shirt.”
Daigle handcuffed McKenney, and she recalls him saying she was under arrest for assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest, and that she would be spending the night in jail in Shediac.
The RCMP won’t release details of McKenney’s arrest or what led to it. Sergeant Eric Hanson at the Sackville detachment confirms by email that on June 23, “Sackville RCMP responded to a 911 call for a disturbance in progress at an apartment in Sackville. While police were determining what had taken place, one person was arrested.”
Baird says he believes his partner reacted like most people would react “if they unexpectedly got grabbed from behind.” And “she didn’t throw any punches,” he says. “She definitely didn’t make any assault at the officer, but she definitely was surprised enough that she turned around and like tried to stop them from putting the handcuffs on her.” He says that at one point he heard Daigle say if McKenney didn’t calm down, that he would tase her. “At which point I asked her to calm down,” recalls Baird, “because I was scared he was going to really hurt her.”
McKenney admits that she did resist Daigle’s takedown, mainly because she was scared. “For like a millisecond, I was like, whoa, and kind of tried to get away, right? I’m like, what is going on? But it’s this huge man. He took me down very quickly,” recalls McKenney.
Daigle took the handcuffed McKenney to his police cruiser, and then went back to speak with Baird, who asked what had happened, and expressed concern over the 911 call to police. Baird says he was still trying to figure out what led to the call in the first place.
“I wanted to ask if it was simply a noise complaint, because my thought process was that maybe [his son] got a little whiny. He was a little whiny before bed, and he was making some noise for sure,” said Baird. “He clarified with me that it was a physical 911 domestic dispute call.”
“I kept asking him, what are you doing about that?” recalls Baird. “Are you going to be doing something about that? Because somebody has reported a false report here.”
A night in jail
McKenney was taken to the Shediac jail to spend an uncomfortable night, and her experience there is part of the Canadian Human Rights Commission complaint being put together by Pathlegal lawyer Mukisa Kakembo on McKenney’s behalf. After her arrest by Daigle, McKenney requested the ability to get some period products from home to bring with her, and she says Daigle refused her request. Kakembo says that is a violation of the Human Rights Act.
“There is a requirement to consider the specific needs of an individual and provide accommodation for that,” says Kakembo. “So by denying her, that portion of it really took away her basic human decency, and her right to dignity.”
A human rights complaint is a long and tedious legal process, one that could take years, says Kakembo. McKenney’s formal complaint to the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission is also proving to be a long process.
McKenney first detailed her complaint in the week following the incident, in an email that found its way to Sergeant Eric Hanson, of the Sackville RCMP detachment. A week after her arrest, McKenney visited the Sackville detachment, where Constable Daigle handled her fingerprinting. While in the detachment, she met Hanson, who told her that he believed Daigle had followed RCMP protocol.
McKenney officially submitted her complaint to the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission on August 9. Later that month, she found out the first step would be to refer the matter back to the RCMP detachment involved, who had 45 days to come up with an “informal resolution”, or else investigate the matter.
In October, McKenney received a letter stating the RCMP were continuing to work on the investigation. She also got a call from an investigator with the Richibucto RCMP detachment, requesting an interview.
October was also the month of McKenney’s first court appearance, and the month that she was formally charged with assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest.
McKenney is getting help from Pathlegal for her human rights complaint, but is on her own so far in terms of defending against the criminal charges against her, and her complaint against the RCMP.
Looking for accountability
Pathlegal lawyer Mukisa Kakembo says McKenney’s story illustrates how police tend not to be trauma informed, a system-wide issue that her organization has seen before. Kakembo says it’s also not uncommon for Pathlegal to hear about cases of excessive use of force by police.
“I think that is one of these situations where it went from a sort of calm evening with a woman and her partner to, unfortunately, being attacked by a police officer who was much larger than her and much stronger than her,” says Kakembo. “In my opinion, there was absolutely no reason for that to happen. A police officer in that situation did not need to use that amount of force.”
“If we are going to have officers responding to wellness checks and to situations of domestic violence, I think really what they need is de-escalation training,” says Kakembo, “to be able to sort of respond to these situations in a way that’s actually going to result in a positive resolution, rather than resulting in someone being attacked by a police officer, and ending up with criminal charges.”
The RCMP will not comment on a public complaint, citing confidentiality and protected information.
McKenney says she’s hoping for some accountability from the RCMP, even as she continues to try to make sense of what happened. “In a matter of one day, I lost so much faith in humanity and in the world,” says McKenney. “I’m doing everything I’m supposed to do. Me and my boyfriend are providing for our kids. We’re good parents, we do everything we’re supposed to do. Why did I ever deserve to be in this position?”
McKenney is still considering her options regarding legal representation on her own charges, and is due back in court on January 3.
