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Published Oct 16, 2024 • 3 minute read
Impaired by fentanyl and doing double the speed limit, Ivan Mirancic slammed into the back of a Dodge Ram truck that had stopped at a traffic light behind a tractor trailer on James Snow Parkway four years ago.
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Both vehicles were “destroyed” and Halton firefighters had to extract the drivers from the mangled wreckage.
The Dodge driver suffered life-altering injuries: he required surgery that left him with steel rods in his back, he can no longer drive, he needs a cane to walk and he’s in constant pain.
In 2023, Marincic pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing bodily harm. Even the judge said that under any other scenario, he’d be sentencing him to jail time.
But thanks to “excessive force” used during his arrest by Halton Regional Police, this dangerous driver will serve just a nine-month conditional sentence.
The collision happened at 3:43 a.m. on Nov. 26, 2020. The black box showed Marincic was driving at 143 km/h in a posted 70 km/h zone at the time of impact. Analysis of his blood taken at the hospital showed he had 88 ng of fentanyl in 100 ml blood.
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Marincic wasn’t arrested until four months later – and the Crown conceded that from the “improperly obtained” warrant to the over-the-top takedown by Halton’s tactical team, his Charter rights were violated at every turn.
Superior Court Justice Erika Chozik found police acted on “false and misleading information” that Marincic had been given multiple chances to turn himself in and had refused. Halton’s Tactical Rescue Unit stormed his parents’ home using a protocol reserved for pursuing a suspect who has barricaded himself inside and refuses to surrender.
“As part of the take down, officers detonated a distraction device, momentarily blinding and stunning Marincic who had come out onto the porch of the home to surrender with his hands up,” the judge wrote in her recent judgment, using italics for emphasis.
“Fully geared and armed officers then ran into him, pushed him back into the house and took him down by force.”
Not just by force, but by “excessive force.”
One of the officers used his Kevlar bulletproof shield to shove Marincic back into the foyer of the house and into mirrored sliding doors. The mirrors exploded, showering both with glass shards.
With his elderly parents looking on helplessly, they then moved in and took Marincic down to the ground. Chozik found he was kneed in the ribs, which had been fractured earlier in the collision, and a second officer grabbed his hair and repeatedly smashed his head into a tile floor covered in broken glass.
“I concluded that Marincic’s arrest and detention were contrary to sections 8 and 9 of the Charter. I concluded that the officers used excessive force and violated his section 7 and 12 Charter rights. I found that each of these breaches was very serious,” she wrote.
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But Chozik refused the defence request to stay the proceedings because Marincic was accused of severely injuring a victim who had nothing to do with the police misconduct. Instead, she said she’d consider a reduced sentence or a damages award to compensate him for the Charter violations.
Following the driver’s guilty plea, the defence urged the judge to award him $25,000 in damages. Despite a psychologist finding “the impact of Marincic’s trauma from his beating and ‘SWAT-style arrest’ has been incapacitating for him,” the judge concluded that damages are actually reserved for civil courts and not a criminal proceeding.
“There is no provision in the Criminal Code that allows this court to grant damages for wrongs suffered, not to a victim of a crime, nor to an accused who suffered because of police misconduct,” Chozik wrote.
Instead, “the appropriate and just remedy in the circumstances is a significant reduction of the sentence.”
So, just nine months in the community for changing another man’s life forever – and it’s the police who are to blame.
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English (US) ·