Kelowna RCMP officer who assaulted student during wellness check won't serve jail time

A Kelowna RCMP officer who dragged a nursing student down a hallway, pulled her hair and stepped on her head during a wellness check was handed a two-year conditional discharge in B.C. provincial court this week.

Const. Lacy Browning, a 15-year veteran of the RCMP, was also ordered to complete 160 hours of community service by provincial court Judge Roy Dickey for the assault on student Mona Wang in a student housing apartment building on UBC's Okanagan campus in January 2020. 

The assault was caught on surveillance camera and viewed by millions of people in Canada and around the world after it emerged during a civil lawsuit Wang launched against Browning and the RCMP in the summer of 2020 during a time of heightened concern in North America over police violence.

In a written statement to CBC News, Wang said she was disappointed with the sentence calling it a "slap on the wrist for all the trauma she had caused."

During the sentencing hearing in Kelowna on Monday, Dickey read a summary of an agreed statement of facts that laid out what happened on the day of the assault. 

Browning was assigned to conduct a wellness check on Wang after a caller to 911 reported she was having a mental health crisis, Dickey said.

Browning attended on her own as backup wasn't available and found Wang lying on her bathroom floor unresponsive. 

The surveillance video shows Browning dragging the young woman down a hallway in the university residence into an elevator and then into the lobby on the main floor of the building. 

At one point, Browning grabs Wang by the hair to lift her head up off the floor. Later in the video, she uses her boot to step down on Wang's head. 

"Const. Browning's actions were criminal and highly inappropriate in the arrest of Miss Wang under the Mental Health Act," Dickey said when reading out his sentence. 

"Her actions highlight what should not occur when a police officer is responding to a person in a mental health crisis."

Wang suffered bruising on her face and chest as well as abrasions and lacerations on her chest and arms as a result of the assault, Dickey said, adding that the incident had caused her emotional trauma and left her with feelings of shame and isolation.

"She believes that the effects will last the remainder of her life," Dickey said.

After the video emerged, the RCMP launched an investigation, and in 2021, Browning was charged with one count of assault.