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(BRENDAN KERGIN / iNFOnews.ca)

A Prince George cop's account of a violent arrest was separated from the truth, but a provincial court judge found reason to acquit him of assault and obstruction of justice.

His lengthy trial spanned multiple dates over two years and Prince George RCMP dog handler Const. Joshua Grafton is now free of criminal charges after a court decision last week.

Const. Grafton was charged with assault and assault with a weapon for his use of force during a February 2016 arrest, which included several blows with his elbow and a knee before and after the suspect was on the ground. The police dog was considered a weapon, which bit and held the suspects arm for nearly a minute while bringing the stolen vehicle suspect into custody.

He and several other officers took two suspects into custody after boxing a stolen Dodge Ram truck in an alley. Grafton's police report didn't mention his use of force, but the entire arrest, unbeknownst to the Mounties, was caught on video.

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Crown prosecutors argued Const. Grafton not only assaulted one of the suspects, Cuyler Aubichon, but that he also obstructed justice by falsifying his police reports, according to a BC Provincial Court decision.

They boxed in the truck around 6:30 a.m., while Const. Grafton extracted the driver with the help of his service dog Azar.

His police report suggested he saw reverse lights turn on while approaching the truck from behind, which led him to believe the driver was preparing to flee. His report also claimed that Aubichon used the truck to ram the police cruiser in front in an attempt to get away, just as Const. Grafton was approaching.

“Getting the driver away from the controls of the stolen vehicle was paramount as he was visibly attempting to flee and was not concerned about ramming the police vehicles to aid in his escape," he wrote in his report.

Video surveillance from a neighbouring home showed that neither of those claims were true. The reverse lights didn't turn on and while the truck did strike the cruiser, it was while Const. Grafton tried to pull Aubichon from the truck, not before.

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Upon seeing the video in court, the police officer suggested he possibly "suffered from tunnel vision," but prosecutors said his testimony was "circular, self-service and telling of a lie."

Judge Peter McDermick, however, noted it was a "high-stress, dynamic" situation so his memory of the arrest may have been distorted.

While that account was untrue, he also failed to mention the seven times he struck Aubichon during the arrest.

Prosecutors argued Const. Grafton used excessive force, then lied to cover it up as he was already under investigation for a similarly violent arrest in September 2015. In that case, he testified he used "soft" elbow strikes as a "distraction strike," which broke a man's jaw and orbital bones.

Aubichon suffered superficial injuries.

Justice McDermick was also skeptical of Aubichon's testimony, which included claims the officers celebrated after he was arrested, then hurled racial slurs at him.

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He claimed they mocked him and were jumping up and down after he was arrested. Another officer denied any were jumping after the arrest, but that was disputed when it was shown on video. There was no audio, however, in the video surveillance.

Aubichon claimed he was struck with a baton and denied the police dog bit both his arms but both those claims were found to be false. The video showed no baton, but did show the dog biting both arms.

Justice McDermick found Aubichon wasn't credible as a witness except when his testimony was backed up by the other police officers.

Although Const. Grafton didn't mention his use of force in his police report, he told the court that Aubichon's injuries from Azar's bites were simply an "occupational hazard."

“He’s in a stolen vehicle, your Honour. His choice was to steal a vehicle. That — I’m not making a slight, suggesting that he is a full-time car thief. It’s just saying that he’s put himself in a stolen vehicle and then decided to not comply with our directions during the arrest. There’s an amount of a risk that comes with that behaviour," he said.

Justice McDermick noted that Const. Grafton's use of force should have been mentioned in his police report, but didn't believe he tried to cover it up.

"He testified that he wasn’t trying to deceive anyone when he was writing his reports. It was a reflection of his memory of the event," the judge said in his decision.

Justice McDermick found not only that Grafton's misreporting of the arrest was more of a mistake than criminal, but his use of force was "proportional, necessary and reasonable" to arrest Aubichon.

Grafton was not only acquitted of criminal charges related to Aubichon's arrest, but Crown prosecutors in 2019 also opted not to charge him for the arrest that broke a man's jaw and orbital bones in 2015.

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