The jury at a coroner’s inquest deemed the 2016 death of an Ottawa man after his violent arrest a homicide, as it made more than 50 recommendations Tuesday aimed at preventing similar deaths in the future.
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Abdirahman Abdi, 38, died in July 2016 after police responded to a 911 call reporting that a man was groping women outside a coffee shop in Ottawa. The inquest heard that Abdi appeared to be in a mental-health crisis at the time and that he received blows to his head during the arrest.
Inquest jurors are required to make a finding on the cause of death, but that carries no legal liability.
The inquest was mandatory under the law because Abdi was injured while in police custody. Its purpose was to examine the circumstances of his death, not to assign blame.
After hearing several weeks of testimony from experts and key witnesses — including the police officer who was acquitted of criminal charges in the case — the inquest jury came back Tuesday evening with numerous recommendations for the Ottawa police force, its board and other authorities.
Those recommendations included reviewing and improving police use-of-force training and de-escalation strategies, as well as addressing anti-Black racism and biases toward people with mental-health issues.
The recommendations also call for more trauma-informed mental-health training for police officers, call takers and dispatchers.
An Ontario judge found Ottawa police Const. Daniel Montsion not guilty of manslaughter and other charges in October 2020, ruling that the prosecution hadn’t proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the blows Abdi received during the arrest resulted in his death.
Montsion, who testified at the inquest in Novmeber, said that deciding whether to use force during an arrest didn’t take into account a person’s mental health and that he was trying to control Abdi before bringing him into custody.
The inquest also heard from Ottawa police Deputy Chief Steven Bell and experts on police use of force, among others.
Bell told the inquest last week that Ottawa police had made changes in the years since Abdi’s death, including improving training on de-escalation, but acknowledged the force has “much more work to do.”
Several parties, including the two police officers who interacted with Abdi in July 2016, agreed the manner of death was homicide, though, in the context of an inquest, which does not assign blame, homicide is defined as “injury which was non-accidentally inflicted, by person other than deceased.”
Lawrence Greenspon, the lawyer representing Abdi’s family, in a closing argument on Monday had urged the jury to find Abdi’s manner of death as a homicide. The inquiry heard from neighbours, police officers, Abdi’s psychiatrists, paramedics and more, including two pathologists who had slightly different findings in the cause of death.
With files from Marlo Glass, Postmedia
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