Pubdate: Wed, 15 September 1999
Source: Toronto Star (Canada)
Copyright: 1999, The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Author: Ashante Infantry, Staff Reporter

MAN STRUGGLED WITH POLICE, INQUEST TOLD

Officers Didn't Use Excess Force, Witness Says

Cries of "Leave me alone" and "Don't touch me" were heard coming from a
police parking lot the night Kenneth Allen died in custody, an inquest jury
has been told.

Nearby resident Sheila Pike told coroner's court yesterday that she saw
Allen "struggling" with at least four officers after they pulled him out of
a cruiser and that one officer may have been restraining him with a baton.

But at no time did any of the officers use excessive force, Pike said.

"I can't say if it was a nightstick and if it was against his shoulder, neck
or head," said Pike, who witnessed the Nov. 29, 1991, encounter from her
living-room window overlooking the 52 Division parking lot.

Allen was taken to the Dundas St. W. station around 11:30 p.m. after he was
arrested for assaulting a Toronto Transit Commission streetcar driver.

The 32-year-old welder died a couple of hours later, after being dragged
into a cell with the nightstick of Constable Paul Van Seters under his neck.

The key question at the inquest is whether it was injuries Allen received
from Van Seters' nightstick, the cocaine he had ingested or a combination of
these that caused his death.

A 1996 trial cleared Van Seters of criminal negligence causing death.

Pike said she was watching television in her fourth-floor Simcoe St.
apartment when she heard a commotion outside.

"He was yelling and shouting, 'Let go of me,'" Pike recalled, speaking of
Allen. "He was really angry; he didn't want anybody around."

After the officers got Allen on the ground, he stopped making any sound or
movement, she said, "I thought he had passed out."

Then two officers - "one under each arm, pulling him along with his feet
dragging behind" took Allen into the station.

"He seemed to be unconscious or semi-conscious; they had to drag him into
the sally port; he looked limp," she remembered.

Pike said it didn't appear to be excessive force.

"I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. I just thought to myself, I'm
glad I'm four floors up and I'm glad I don't have to do that job," the
teaching assistant testified.

The court has heard that it took several people to subdue an agitated Allen,
who was on cocaine when he boarded a Queen St. W. streetcar and attacked
driver James Dobbie for no apparent reason.

While several people were able to subdue Allen, he managed to kick the fare
box over, ripping its bolts out of the floor.

When Van Seters and fellow Toronto police officers Nick Ashley, William Kemp
and Terence Rivers arrived, they carried him off the streetcar in handcuffs
without excessive force, witnesses have testified.

"He wasn't as agitated as when he was on the streetcar; he was calm," said
TTC supervisor William Nugent.

"They dealt with him the way they had to under the circumstances --
professionally."

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