WARNING: This story contains distressing details.
Hamilton police officer Brian Wren will serve 18 months of probation for assaulting an Indigenous man under arrest.
At Wren’s sentencing Thursday, Ontario Court Justice Bruce Pugsley described Wren’s actions as “assaulting a helpless prisoner.”
Wren was the acting sergeant of a plainclothes police unit when he assaulted Patrick Tomchuk last May.
Tomchuk was already laying on the ground, “unresisting and possibly unconscious,” handcuffed and restrained by several other officers when Wren kicked him in the head and face multiple times, Justice Pugsley said.
Wren kicked Tomchuk so hard, he broke his own toe, Justice Pugsley noted.
“There was no need of any assistance from the defendant,”
