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After a long investigation, Saskatchewan’s Serious Incident Response Team (SIRT) said a man who died while in Regina police custody in August of 2023 was likely trying to smuggle drugs into a correctional facility.
SIRT, a civilian-led organization which investigates instances where a person has died or been seriously hurt by the actions of a police officer or while in police custody, released its report on the death on Tuesday morning.
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According to the report, the man arrived to turn himself in at Regina Police headquarters on the morning of August 21, 2023, on two outstanding warrants from File Hills Police Service.
The report said he arrived by taxi along with another man who stayed in the cab, telling the driver to wait so he could make sure the man went inside and didn’t “back out.”
The man had to wait about an hour and a half for the warrants to be confirmed. During that time, SIRT’s report said two women came to see and speak to him in the lobby separately.
Once the validity of the warrants was confirmed, he was taken back into the detention area where he was searched. The report said he was co-operative with police and told them he had drank alcohol the night before but hadn’t consumed any drugs in the last 24 hours.
That evening, while the man was being held in a cell, the report said he started to get restless and complained of a fever, tremors and body aches. A paramedic who examined him believed they were symptoms of a withdrawal from narcotics. Several hours later, he was given non-prescription pain medication.
A little while later, a paramedic came to check on him again and saw him making erratic movements on his bunk. The paramedic and officers went into the cell and put the man in the recovery position, then started CPR a short time later.
More paramedics soon arrived, and brought the man to the Regina General Hospital.
A scan at the hospital showed there were six packages within his body, and later testing revealed that at least some of them contained methamphetamine and morphine.
Five of the packages were removed, but the sixth couldn’t be. At 4:48 p.m. on Aug. 22, he was pronounced dead. The report said he died of acute methamphetamine poisoning.
SIRT said it was highly likely that the man turned himself in in an attempt to smuggle drugs into a correctional facility.
The team’s investigation centred around the police actions in and response to the situation. It found there was no use of force by police at any point in the arrest or detention, the recognition of his medical distress and the attempted treatment were reasonable, so there was no Criminal Code offence committed.
The report pointed out that the police have a duty to appropriately care for people in custody, and while a person trying to smuggle drugs doesn’t relieve police of the duty, it does make it more complicated because the person doesn’t necessarily truthfully or accurately report their medical condition.
“Even when symptoms of the affected person’s medical condition had begun to present, and were ultimately diagnosed as withdrawal symptoms, the affected person did not provide accurate information or correct the diagnosis,” read the report.
“As the affected person’s condition worsened, detention staff responded by entering the affected person’s cell and immediately commencing medical treatment.”
After the man’s death, Regina police installed new biometric monitoring systems in its cells, which the service said will allow them to respond more quickly to an emergency.
