By Lethbridge News Now (Patrick Burles and Aaron Mahoney)

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LETHBRIDGE – Alberta’s police watchdog is investigating a struggle involving a Lethbridge officer and two men that was captured on video and posted on social media.

According to Lethbridge Police, around 1:30 a.m. on Oct. 28 they were called to a party at La Cite des Prairies Hall in the 600 Blk. of 21 St. S. after a fire extinguisher went off inside and several fights broke out. As the crowd was leaving, another fight broke out south of the centre. 

Approximately 100 to 150 people attended the party, according to police.

Lethbridge Police say while the first officer on scene was placing someone under arrest, a male tackled him from behind and knocked him to the ground. The man then allegedly tried to hold the officer down and take his Conducted Energy Weapon from its holster. The officer was able to maintain control of the weapon and the male fled the scene.

In the short video – posted to Instagram by dangercats69 – a male LPS officer is seen walking towards another male on the outside of a group congregated on the street, grabbing him by the throat, then appearing to punch him. The officer continues walking towards the male when he is tackled from behind by another male wearing an orange hoodie and dark pants.

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All three men fall to the ground, while someone yells “Woah! Hey! Hey! Stop! Stop!” The male in the orange shirt then places a hand on the officer’s belt before disappearing from the frame, at which point the officer again grabs the throat of the male he initially engaged with and forces him to the ground. The officer then sits on the man’s chest and appears to speak into his radio, while several people are yelling and some heard saying “Please stop. Get off him.”

“These are very difficult and actually highly volatile, fairly dangerous situations where you have 100 to 150 youths intoxicated for the most part and very little in the way of chaperones or adult chaperones – I believe there was only one adult at this situation – so what you end up happening is a real pack mentality mindset and it can get quite volatile,” LPS spokesperson Sgt. Cam Van Roon tells Lethbridge News NOW.

“Imagine yourself walking into a situation with 100 to 150 volatile, drunk, really all of a sudden angry kids that have just been the subject of fighting amongst themselves – and then authority shows up, that being the police. And all of that anger etcetera, hostility, and volatility actually gets pointed towards the police officer who just walks into a situation.

“In a situation like that, you need to deal with the situation quickly because if you don’t, it will continue to escalate.”

Van Roon says they will be conducting a review – as they do anytime officers use force in the line of duty – in which they will examine all of the information that is available to determine if the level of force was reasonable in the situation.

“Are all of the tactics that that officer used at that time what we would normally teach exactly to the letter of the law – probably not,” said Van Roon, as he discussed what is seen in the video. “To deal with that situation textbook… is very difficult because there are so many other factors that are at play that the officer is aware of in terms of officer safety, that he’s actually in a very volatile, difficult situation.”

He also stressed that members of the public need to take a similar approach when they view the video.

“I think if we backtrack a little bit, what we have to make sure is that the public… when they view these videos online etcetera, they need to understand, again, that it’s one snippet in time of what is a bigger, more volatile situation,” explained Van Roon. “To not be able to truly understand the totality or see the totality of the situation – to not understand that earlier on, you know, someone had sprayed the fire extinguisher in the school, so everyone came rushing out. Then, now you have 100, 150 drunk youth fighting, yelling, screaming – that video doesn’t show that, that video doesn’t show what the officer walks into.

“Video [is] one piece of the puzzle… but it is not something that we can completely hang our hat on, because it doesn’t tell the whole story, it’s not a 360-degree angle of everything that happened, it’s very one-dimensional,” continued Van Roon. “Video has a great advantage in that it shows something that is live that you can visually see, but the flip side that we have to be careful of is that we realize it is one perspective, one angle of what happened, and one snippet of what happened.”

Van Roon noted that to his knowledge, the individual accused of tackling the officer has not yet been located. Peyton Thomas Kale Many Shots, 18, of Brooks has been charged with assaulting a peace officer, disarming or attempting to disarm a peace officer and obstructing a peace officer.

As for potential charges against the individual who the officer initially engaged, Van Roon says an investigation is underway and that he could not comment further.