Victoria teen tethered in police cell for hours alleges brutality in civil trial

Her lawyer is arguing that Willow Kinloch's arrest and detainment when Kinloch was a tiny 15-year-old are tantamount to assault.

Kinloch told court Tuesday at the civil trial that she became panicked and frantic" while detained and said police descended on her after they wrongly concluded she was trying to assault a jail matron with her shoe.

Kinloch testified she remembered being pinned up against the wall by someone holding her throat and she remembers pleading with the police not to put her back in the padded cell.

Kinloch also said she recalled saying: "Aren't you guys cops? Aren't you supposed to be helping me?"

She said she was "terrified. I was confused."

Her lawyer, Richard Neary, told jurors Tuesday, the first day of the civil case, that police breached Kinloch's rights and Canadians do not tolerate the type of treatment she endured in the police cell following her arrest for being drunk.

"It will be my argument that there is absolutely no way in the world the defendants can justify the force they used on Willow Kinloch," he said in his opening statement.

"In Canadian society people can simply not be treated the way Willow Kinloch was treated on May 7, 2005."

Kinloch, who is tiny and weighs less than 100 pounds, sat in the front of the courtroom with her mother as opening arguments began in the trial naming two Victoria police officials, two police headquarters jail officials and the City of Victoria as defendants.

Jurors saw a video tape Tuesday showing Kinloch, who now is 18, pacing the padded cell like a caged animal.

She kicked and punched at the walls and at times tried to grab at the tiny, rectangular jail-cell window which she is barely tall enough to reach.

There are two videos, one where Kinloch is not cuffed and tied and the other showing her in restraints.

"I became panicked and frantic," Kinloch testified.

"I didn't know where I was," she testified. "I didn't know why I was there."

The court also saw footage of police entering the cell, placing her on the ground, and attaching the restraints.

Kinloch said she doesn't remember being questioned by ambulance paramedics and police who found her wandering in a downtown Victoria neighbourhood after midnight. She admitted to being intoxicated.

Kinloch said she became frightened after police failed in their attempt to take her home and contact her parents shortly before 5 a.m.

She had already spent several hours in the padded cell, but without restraints.

She said the call box at her parent's apartment was not working and police wouldn't allow her to yell up to the second-floor apartment where she lived.

"It was what a lot of people in the building had been doing," she said.

Kinloch said she became frightened when it became apparent to her she was about to spend her second stint of the night in the cell.

She said was co-operating with the jailhouse matron, voluntarily handing over her sweater and bra, but when she tried to take off her shoes one of them struck the matron on her shin.

The matron immediately put one of her hands to Kinloch's throat, she said.

Kinloch said she remembers the matron calling for assistance and several police officers arrived.

Kinloch said she was the one who needed help, but police put her in restraints.

Neary said the videos allow jurors to decide for themselves whether the teenager was behaving in an extremely violent manner on the night of her arrest.

"There are periods she is acting out," he told court.

"She is banging on walls. She is extremely upset. You'll have the (video) footage. You'll see the footage. Please watch this and apply your common sense."

Neary said he will not contest Kinloch's original arrest and her being taken to police cells. But it's what occurs from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. in the police cells that has led to the court case, he said.

She was not offered a drink of water during that time or access to a telephone, he said.

Victoria Police launched an internal investigation into the incident after the video was released by Kinloch's lawyer earlier this year, but the acting police chief said the teen was kept in the cell for her protection.

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association also filed a complaint the to B.C. Complaints Commissioner over the incident.