The Special Investigations Unit says it has laid criminal charges against three Belleville Police officers after a man was hurt while being arrested in 2019.
The SIU’s preliminary report says a 34-year-old man was seriously injured when the trio of officers arrested him inside the KFC/Taco Bell restaurant on North Front Street on November 15, 2019.
Constables Kyle Dodds, Paul Fyke and Jeffrey Smith are all charged with assault causing bodily harm and will be in court on June 21.
The SIU says it won’t release any other information on the case at this time, as the matter is now before the courts.
Meanwhile in a statement released on Thursday, Belleville Police Chief Mike Callaghan is asking the public to “not prejudge these officers” and to “listen closely to the facts and allow the due legal process to take place.”
Here is the full statement from Belleville Police Chief Mike Callaghan:
The Belleville Police Service understands and is very cognizant that any charges against our officers are very challenging as a community and as a policing community. This is a very difficult time for the officers, their families and all of our members at the Belleville Police Service. We would respectfully request that you not prejudge these officers and that you listen closely to the facts of this case and allow the due legal process to take place. As your community police service, we will continue to serve our citizens and visitors with professionalism, pride and respect as we always have since 1836.
It is important to note that in 2020 the Belleville Police Service was involved in approximately 30,000 calls for service. Between the Special Investigations Unit and the Office of the Independent Police Review Directorate we had a total of 7 complaints that were investigated by the two Police oversight bodies. This equates to 0.02% of the time our interactions resulted in complaints against our officers. This statistic provides a snapshot of the professionalism of the women and men of the Belleville Police Service.
The Belleville Police will not be commenting further so as to respect the legal process.
Michael T. Callaghan
Belleville Police Service
Chief of Police
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story, with information from the original press release, stated that 0.0002% of Belleville Police interactions led to complaints. An edit was made after the BPS issued the following correction:
“For clarification on yesterdays media release there was a clerical error and the correct percentage of police involvement with the Special Investigations Unit and the Office of the Independent Police Review Director is .02%.”
