What Happened To The Kingston Detective Who Blamed Police Killings On “Resisting Arrest?”
As every reader of this article knows, last year, Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin put his knee on George Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, with the aid of fellow police officers Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Keung and Tou Thao, killing him in cold blood.
The event shook the world to its core, setting off protests against police brutality around the globe. Kingston itself joined in, rallying with a vigil on June 2nd in Skeleton Park, organized by the Black Luck Collective, who’s Facebook page describes their purpose to be “about inviting and the coming-together of new and seasoned Black Kingstonians to see, to know, that they are not isolated here and to uncover our dependable and visible community.”
Less prideful to the city was an anti-police brutality protest announced for June 6th, with a horrible mess of a genesis. It was created by inexperienced organizers, neither of whom knew previously about the vigil on the second, with no planned speakers. They also initially seemed to invite the Kingston Police to attend and speak, though they later claimed this was miscommunication.
Attendees of the protest reported that any and all people were allowed to approach the speaking area, including one individual who explicitly declared “All Lives Matter”. All in all, it may have been a gesture of good intentions, but unfortunately, it probably did more harm than good. It is also important to note that The Black Luck Collective stated they had no hand in the June 6th protest.
As frustrating as it is that an anti-police brutality protest that initially openly welcomed police was held in a city where Black people are stopped nearly 4 times as much as white people, what is even more galling that one of Kingston’s own, Detective Brad Hughes, published a post on his personal Facebook account on June 1st, five days before the botched protest, which openly declared that George Floyd had a hand in his death by resisting arrest.
The post, which was removed at the behest of a senior commander four days after posting, created an outrage in the community. Global News, The Whig Standard, the Ottawa Citizen and the Kingstonist all ran pieces on it, a petition was created to fire the officer, and multiple social media scribes were penned against him. I know this because, yours truly, penned one of those social media scribes.
That particular tweet was even featured in the Kingstonist article on the matter, of course with the “fucking” taken out. Evidently implying that a post amounting to “resisting arrest is grounds for execution” is more palatable than “fuck”.
Kingston’s own, Detective Brad Hughes, published a post on his personal Facebook account on June 1st…which openly declared that George Floyd had a hand in his death by resisting arrest.
But what did Brad Hughes say, exactly, to warrant this reaction from myself and the Kingston community? Although the post was removed, pictures are still available. I will link the full text in a picture below. Content Warning for defending police brutality.
Despite preemptively couching the forthcoming language by declaring that he would be the first to admit when an officer is wrong and will be held accountable, appearing to condemn the actions of his career-comrades, he then writes “The main component which is 100% present in ALL incidents where someone was injured or died while in police custody regardless of what race is involved is that the accused was resisting their arrest.”
Either Hughes has lived in a subterranean cave for the entirety of his life, or he was being willfully ignorant. Do I need to point to the case of Breonna Taylor, where cops burst into the wrong apartment without identifying themselves and proceeded to shoot and kill her? Should I retell the shooting of Philando Castile, a legal gun owner being shot next to his partner and his then 4-year-old daughter in a traffic stop? Perhaps Fred Hampton? Who was assassinated by the police?
I could be more charitable and assume Hughes was talking about Canada instead. This is a preposterous notion as the case in question Hughes was referring to was in the U.S, but let’s do this mental exercise for the sake of steelmanning his position. Just for a sampler, in Canada we have the seemingly unending cases of cops shooting people on mental wellness checks. We also have the Saskatoon freezing deaths, the brutal killing of Myles Gray, and of course the RCMP having a 24-point, nearly 4,000 word Wikipedia article just for their controversies.
This of course, would be in conjunction with the fact that police officers use “resisting arrest” against Black suspects far more than white suspects, and the concept itself is used to justify police brutality.
I could also make a strong argument that George Floyd was not resisting arrest according to witnesses at the scene. But saying all of this without further context would mean conceding the point that those who do resist arrest should be expected to die. This is a lie, and is the conclusion that Brad Hughes wanted readers to accept.
Admittedly, it may be hard to tell as of late, but at time of writing, we do not live in Judge Dredd’s universe. Very few crimes carry the death penalty, and those that do are, supposedly, to be decided in court. So implying that any of the scramble one may put up upon arrest somewhat permits the cops to kill them, unless their life is in immediate danger, is authoritarian bullshit. Not that cops won’t claim they “feared for their life” every chance they get, even when unwarranted.
No, Hughes’ attitude exemplified in this post made it clear, any Kingstonians who are accused of “resisting arrest” and are subsequently beaten, injured or killed, are also to blame for whatever happens to them.
But now that the issue with the post has been clarified and explained, why bring it up 8 months later? Surely the police have dealt with the matter? After all, Sgt. Steve Koopman announced they were to investigate the incident and discipline accordingly, should the situation call for it. As Global News reported in June of last year, Koopman said that these could range from anything from a written warning, to a financial penalty to possible termination. In the same article, Hughes himself said that he has a comment prepared, but plans to wait upon its release until the investigation concludes.
Hughes’ attitude exemplified in this post made it clear, any Kingstonians who are accused of “resisting arrest” and are subsequently beaten, injured or killed, are also to blame for whatever happens to them.
Well, the reason I bring this up now, 8 months later is because, as far as I can tell, the investigation is still ongoing. The last public mention I could find of it was in a Queen’s Journal report from October of last year, stating from an email that Constable Ashley Guthienz sent them regarding their questions on the matter: “on the organization’s end [the investigation] is an internal matter […] after previous media inquiries it was identified that internal matters will not be discussed publicly.”
I found this curious, as it was explicitly said by Brad Hughes that he had a statement prepared and would post it as soon as the investigation had concluded, a statement which I could not find. So I took it to myself to message Kingston Police directly, as a representative for The Limestone Dissection. I figured it would be a long-shot considering the DIY attitude of myself and this project and unsurprisingly, they were unwilling to answer my questions. Constable Guthienz told me that they only respond to accredited organizations, and “Unfortunately we will be unable to provide you with any information in regards to this request”. Please don’t read into this, as I myself would find giving details of an investigation to a new org started from the ground up pretty unreasonable as well.
That being said, the lack of media coverage in accredited organizations is strange on its face, and police not discussing internal matters is, sadly, par for the course. It is a frustrating feature of modern-policing that shields the cops from the public’s concerns against the people that monitor them (the monitors who are being paid by the public’s tax dollars). But the length of the investigation warrants further inspection. Inspection that our local news organizations should look into, as previously shown, the public is not able to obtain such info.
An internal investigation into a Facebook post taking five months would be laughable in any industry. But a Facebook post that: caused this much of a public outcry, which was acknowledged by the poster and his superiors, was taken down due to the public reaction, and included suggesting blame for the death of an arrested man was partially his own, when that man was killed by a cop and when the poster himself was a cop, would be a pitiable hilarious farce, were it not the veiled public threat to the citizens of Kingston that it was. That being said, without an update, it’s entirely possible that the internal investigation is taking 8 months and counting.
An internal investigation into a Facebook post taking five months would be laughable in any industry.
To be clear, I do not want to suggest that Brad Hughes intended this post to be taken as a threat, or that he has committed any act of police brutality, or even remotely plans to. There are no instances of him being involved in such acts, or investigations into planning them, or anything of that matter. But it is not the intent that concerns me so much, as the effects. In a similar scenario, were a man to say that there was “violence on many sides” about a rally where neo-nazis murdered a woman, we would rightfully call him out for downplaying the acts of violence, regardless of his intent.*
Two separate websites created to ease access to Ontario’s sunshine lists (a public sector salary disclosure site) put Brad Hughes salary at a whopping $114,300. Well $114,300.71 to be precise, (search yourself!). The Kingston Police Municipal Board received $43,486,975 last year, 10.8% of the operating budget for 2020. The next highest Board’s funding? Frontenac County-Land Ambulance, at $7,952,623, which is not even 1/5th of the funding allocated to the police. The public deserves to know the results of this investigation and quite frankly, the investigators in question need to stop dragging their feet.
If this 8-month-long deep-dive into a tone-deaf Facebook post is any indication of the Kingston Police’s ability to investigate, I want my money back.
- *I apologize for the extremity in which my similar example was placed, but I challenge you to find an occurrence where suggesting a victim shares blame for their death is anything but abhorrent and tasteless.
Scott Pinkerton is a writer for The Beaverton, and runs the YouTube channel Pinko Punko. He can be found on Twitter.
