Capstone: documenting and reviewing an arrest

Two weeks after the March 6 shift, Sergeant Haddad sat down with Reyes and Malhotra in a small meeting room with three files, the body-worn camera recordings, the in-car video, the custody records and the cell video. Sergeant Larocque joined them for the part of the review that covered the cells. Desjardins brings the review into the classroom as the course's capstone. 'Everything in this course comes together in two things,' he says. 'What you write down, and what you learn from it.'

The review is not a disciplinary process. Port Ardent, like many services, uses after-action reviews to turn ordinary work into lessons, to recognize what went well, and to catch small problems before they become large ones. Reviews are done for a sample of arrests, for every arrest involving force or injury, and for every strip search. The officers being reviewed contribute as much as the supervisor does.

Notes: the foundation of everything

Every part of the review depended on notes. In Wood v. Schaeffer in 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada described an officer's duty to prepare accurate, detailed and comprehensive notes as soon as practicable after an investigation, as an implicit part of an officer's duty. Notes are used to refresh the officer's memory in court, they are disclosed to the defence, and their quality affects the officer's credibility. Desjardins sets out the qualities of good arrest notes:

• Made at the time or as soon as practicable afterwards, with the time recorded.
• Specific: times, words used, the person's exact words, distances, positions, injuries and property.
• Complete: the grounds for each step, the rights given and responses, every search and its purpose, any force and why, and every medical observation.
• Honest: what the officer saw and did, including mistakes, not what they wish had happened.
• Their own: written by the officer, not copied from a partner or adjusted to match.

Haddad shows the class two versions of a note about the Dunn takedown. The first says: 'Male became combative and was taken to ground.' The second says: '21:51:58 Dunn pulled R arm out of my grip and turned away toward Dock St. I and PC Reyes took him to the ground on the sidewalk as trained. He kicked twice toward PC Reyes's legs. 21:52:31 handcuffed behind back, checked fit. 21:52:38 sat up. Blood in hair at back of head. Requested EMS.' 'The first note tells me nothing,' she says. 'The second tells me what happened, in what order and why. If this goes to court in a year, which one do you want to be reading from?'

Body-worn camera and notes

Body-worn cameras have changed how arrests are documented and reviewed. A recording shows things notes cannot, such as tone of voice and the exact sequence of events, but it also misses things an officer saw or felt, such as an object felt during a pat-down or a movement outside the camera's view. Notes and video work together. Services differ on whether officers may watch their recording before writing their notes and reports. Some Canadian services allow it and others restrict it, especially for incidents that will be investigated by an oversight body such as the Special Investigations Unit, where the concern is that viewing could shape an officer's account. Port Ardent allows officers to review footage for routine arrests and requires them to note in their report that they did so.

Malhotra's first use-of-force report on the Dunn arrest had described Dunn as kicking 'several times'. After he watched the recording during the review, he saw that Dunn had kicked twice, and that the second kick came after the handcuffs were partly on. He filed a supplementary report correcting it. Haddad noted that the correction was exactly what should happen. 'The recording didn't catch you out,' she told him. 'It made your report more accurate, and you corrected it yourself.'

The review

Haddad uses a simple scoring sheet with ten areas, each scored 0, 1 or 2. A score of 2 means the area was handled to the standard expected of an experienced officer; 1 means it was acceptable but with a clear improvement to make; 0 means it was below standard. The total is less important than the specific improvements it identifies.

Adding the ten areas: seven scored 2 and three scored 1, so the total is 7 × 2 + 3 × 1 = 17 out of 20. The three areas marked 1 were approach and communication, restraints and positioning, and medical care and documentation.

The total is 17 out of 20. Haddad is clear that this is a very good result for a probationary officer and her coach, and that the three areas marked 1 are the useful part of the review. Each produced a specific change.

What changed

From the approach score, Reyes added a habit she now uses at every traffic stop: she pauses at the rear of the driver's door, where she can see the driver's hands and lap, before stepping forward to speak. Haddad added a short reminder about this to the platoon's next briefing. From the restraint score, Port Ardent's training unit added a line to the arrest checklist: recheck handcuff fit after any search or struggle, and again before transport. From the documentation score, the service's use-of-force report template was changed to prompt officers to state whether they reviewed video before writing and, if a count is given, how it was determined.

Larocque added one item from the cells. The review of the cell video showed that the officer checking Dunn at 04:10 had done exactly the right thing when he vomited, but that it took her ninety seconds to reach the sergeant by radio because the radio was on the desk. The custody area now requires the checking officer to carry a radio on every check. 'Ninety seconds was fine that night,' Larocque says. 'On another night it might not be.'

What happened next

Dana Whitcomb was accepted into the Crown's diversion program. She completed it in May 2026, including community service hours at a food bank and a meeting with the pharmacy manager, and the charge was withdrawn. She wrote a short letter to Reyes, care of the station, saying that she had been more frightened of being humiliated than of being charged, and thanking her for taking her out through the back. Reyes keeps it in her locker.

Riley Dunn pleaded guilty to assault in June 2026. He received a conditional discharge with twelve months of probation, a condition to complete an alcohol counselling program and a condition not to attend the Anchor Tavern. He made no complaint about the arrest. Through his lawyer, he asked that the officers be told he did not remember much of the night but had seen the video, and was grateful he had been taken to the hospital.

Mason Pruitt's case is still before the courts. A preliminary inquiry is scheduled for January 2027, and his lawyer has said she will challenge the strip search and the vehicle search. The prosecutor told Haddad that the notes, the custody record and the strip search report were among the most complete she had seen, and that whatever the court decides, it will be able to decide on a full and accurate record. Pruitt is presumed innocent, and the outcome of the case is for the court.

Lessons from the course

Desjardins closes the course where he began, with the two words on the whiteboard. He asks each student to name one practice from the course that makes an arrest more lawful and one that makes it more humane. Priya Sandhu chooses knowing your authority before you act, and asking the suicide question as if you care about the answer. Marco DiSanto chooses setting the scope of a search by its purpose, and sitting a restrained person up as soon as they stop resisting. Jesse Morningstar chooses giving rights again when circumstances change, and treating 'I can't breathe' as an emergency every time. Amara Okafor chooses getting a warrant for a phone when there is time, and walking a cooperative person out the back door instead of through a crowd.

'Every one of those is something you can do on your first shift,' Desjardins says. 'None of them requires years of experience. They require knowing the law, paying attention and caring about the person in front of you. Do those three things on every arrest, and you will spend your career being proud of what the recordings show.'

Learning from inquests and reviews

Desjardins reminds the class that many of the practices in this course were written in response to deaths. Coroner's inquests, independent investigations and civil cases in both countries have examined people who died after being restrained face down, people who died of head injuries in cells after being lodged as simply drunk, people who died of overdoses after swallowing drugs at arrest, and people who died by suicide in police custody after nobody asked about their risk. Their recommendations repeat the same themes: get people up after restraint, get medical assessment for head injuries and intoxication, rouse intoxicated people on every check, ask about suicide properly, pass on information at every handover and record checks honestly.

An after-action review is a small version of the same idea. It asks what happened, why, and what should change, without waiting for a tragedy to force the question. Haddad tells the class that the best reviews are the ones nobody would ever have noticed if they had not been done. 'Nobody would have known that the radio was on the desk,' she says. 'Nobody would have known that the cuff had tightened during the search. Now everyone knows, and the next person in those cells is a little safer because of it.'

Desjardins also asks the students to think about the officers' well-being in the review. Arrests that involve a struggle, an injury or a medical emergency can stay with officers for days. Reyes admitted during the review that she had replayed the moment Dunn's head came near the curb many times. Haddad told her that was normal, reminded her of the service's peer support team and asked her to speak to them, which she did. A good review looks after the people who did the work as well as the work itself.