Warning: There are graphic images included in the article below.
BEDFORD, N.S. — Troylena Dixon needed to find her 15-year-old son fast.
She was frantic after receiving a call from her boy while at her Bedford home Friday evening.
He managed to speed dial her while being wrestled to the ground by two Halifax Regional Police officers. She knew her son was in trouble and pleaded for him to respond but he didn’t. His screams got louder, demanding that the officers get off of him.
Dixon and her husband immediately jumped in their car and went looking for their boy. They eventually did after 15 excruciating minutes. He had been arrested and was sitting in the back of an HRP car outside the Bedford Place Mall.
He had not been charged with anything. She eventually got her son back and took him to the IWK where he was treated for his injuries and put on concussion watch. He’s since been diagnosed with a concussion.
Now she’s focused on holding the officers accountable and getting justice for her son.
“To be 100 per cent honest, I’m mad, I’m hurt, I’m angry, I’m sad,” said Dixon on Sunday. "I’m feeling every emotion you can possibly feel. I wish I could take his place. I wish it was me.”
SIRT investigating arrest
The arrest is being investigated by the province’s police watchdog, the Serious Incident Response Team. The officers have been placed on administrative duty until the investigation is finished, said HRP.
Her son, whose identity is being protected because he’s a minor, recorded his exchange with the officers just outside Bedford Place Mall in the moments before his arrest.
He’s shown objecting to being held by police, saying “I can go outside if I want to.” One of the officers threatens to arrest him, to which he responds: “For what, speaking my mind?” That’s when the physical altercation happened.
Dixon said the officers were responding to a complaint against her son at another nearby mall. She said her husband had dropped him off at Sunnyside Mall at about 4:30 p.m. where he met a group of friends. While there he said he was racially profiled by a security officer and accused of loitering. He was ordered to leave the premises. But before leaving he recorded his exchange with the security officer. He texted his mother about the incident.
The police officers confronted his son inside the Bedford Place Mall, where at that time he was with a teenage girl. He argued with the officers but followed their orders to accompany them outside of the mall.
She said her son took out his phone and started recording when one of the officers pulled out his handcuffs, threatening to arrest him.
“I always told my kids to take your phone out in situations like this because that’s the best defence that we have,” said Dixon.
Released without charges
Dixon arrived at the scene after first checking to see whether her son was at the Sunnyside Mall. She said she encountered two police cars and the young girl crying. She said she soon discovered her son in the back of one of the cars screaming for her.
“I see a little girl crying, I go to the cop car and say, ‘Is my son in there?’ Then I see my son in the back of the car yelling for us.”
She said the girl said one of the officers hit her son’s head off the ground. Dixon said she started to record all of her interaction with the officers. Dixon said the officers denied injuring her son. She questioned whether her son had been charged.
She was told he hadn’t but that the boy could have been charged with causing a disturbance or resisting arrest.
She said after roughly 45 minutes her boy was handed over to her without any charges. At the hospital, her son was also treated for a deep cut on his finger. Apart from a concussion, the boy’s at home dealing with serious back, shoulder and neck pain.
Now she’s in talks with a lawyer about the next steps. She plans to file a police complaint and also a complaint to the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission.
She said she’s especially concerned given recent public accusations of racial profiling against HRP officers.
Back in late November, HRP Chief Dan Kinsella made a public apology for the force’s historic mistreatment of black Nova Scotians. Roughly a week later an unarmed black man was tasered by HRP officers on Quinpool Road. Last month, a young black mother was violently arrested inside a Walmart store after objecting to being accused of shoplifting.
Dixon said these cases aren’t just about racism but speak to a larger problem of abuse of power.
“If they’re doing this to a 15-year-old what are they doing to everyone else? It’s not about black or white, it’s about treating people in a humane way.”
More speaking out, Jones says
Halifax black activist El Jones agreed. But she said the recently recorded incidents don’t indicate that police racial profiling is on the rise, only that more people are speaking out about experiencing it.
She said people in the black community have been emboldened by the recent Wortley report released last March, that publicly affirmed what they already knew. That the force has a long history of discriminating against African Nova Scotians. The report showed black people in Halifax were six times more likely to be stopped by police than white people.
“People are gaining confidence in putting themselves forward and you see the kind of abuse they get when they do," said Jones.
“It’s very difficult to come forward with these stories but it’s especially concerning because this is only what we’re catching on video.”
Jones said what’s more concerning is what’s not being caught on camera.
“We’re seeing so many disturbing examples of the police’s inability to interact with the public and nothing is being done about it,” said Jones.
