Man acquitted of assaulting officer with water bottle at Halifax housing protest

A judge has found a man not guilty of assaulting a police officer during a Halifax housing protest in 2021, which saw hundreds try to prevent the demolition of homeless shelters.

A judge has acquitted a man accused of throwing a bottle at police during a Halifax housing protest in one of the first decisions from a series of trials related to the 2021 demonstration.

Judge Gregory Lenehan found Robert John Newell not guilty on Monday of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest, in connection with the protest during which several hundred people tried to stop the demolition of homeless shelters.

Police arrested about two dozen demonstrators and pepper-sprayed multiple people as a chaotic scene erupted on Aug. 18, 2021, when municipal workers attempted to take away the shelters that had been erected in front of the former Halifax public library.

Lenehan said in Halifax provincial court he wasn’t “certain of the identification” of Newell as the person seen in a video recording throwing a water bottle at a police sergeant, or as the person struggling with a constable during an attempted arrest.

The judge noted a number of problems with the police identification of Newell, saying the arresting officer’s procedure of looking at a single photo of Newell from a police database to identify him as the bottle thrower wasn’t sufficient.

Lenehan said the officer had received pepper spray in his eyes as he had arrested Newell, adding that the officer couldn’t properly see who he had detained and transferred to a colleague.

The arresting officer never asked the detainee his name, relying on a colleague’s account and then looking up the man on the police database, the judge said. Lenehan said it’s “not acceptable” for a police officer to use a single image from a police database to identify someone; the arresting officer, the judge added, should have looked at “an array of photos” to pick out the suspect.

“That identification is flawed,” Lenehan said. “It is no more acceptable for a police officer to look at a single suggested photo identifying a subject than it is to provide a civilian witness with a single photo for the same purpose.”