Toronto-area man files complaint against Laval, Que., police after violent arrest caught on video

A man from the Toronto area says he feared for his life when police officers in Laval, Que., wrestled him to the ground, pepper-sprayed him, used a stun gun on him and placed a spit mask over his face.

Gulaid Mahdi Omar, 31, said the incident left him concussed and shaken, but he says he did nothing wrong. No charges have been laid against him. After the incident, the police gave him two tickets for failing to provide identification, his driver's license and insurance to an officer.

Omar said he was in the Montreal area celebrating getting a new job with his family on Sept. 1, when, after parking a rental car near a lounge in Laval, two police officers approached him and told him to get back in the car. 

Omar said he was confused, and said he didn't know why the officers approached him, or if they were arresting him. He said there was also a language barrier: the officers were speaking French, which he doesn't speak. 

"I asked them 'what am I being detained for?'" he said in an interview. But the officers didn't say, and instead, one of them pushed him, Omar recalled, prompting him to say, "Don't touch me, 'I know my rights.'"

Then, he said, the officers hauled him to the ground and began punching him and kneeling on him.

"I thought I was going to die," he said.

Videos shot by bystanders and shared on social media show two police officers detaining Omar on the ground and hitting him repeatedly in the lower body and crotch.

In the first four-minute video, officers yell at bystanders to stay back as the person recording says that Omar, who is contorted on the ground, is not resisting. The videos begin after the initial arrest and do not show the moments leading up to it.

At one point, one of the officers yells at Omar to give him his hand, even while each officer is gripping one of his wrists. 

Omar says "take my hand, here" before he's slammed onto his stomach. At that point, he can be heard repeatedly saying "I can't breathe."

His friends, who recorded the video from inside the vehicle, yell at officers that Omar cannot breathe, with one of the officers replying, "[If] he talks, he can [breathe]." 

In a second four-minute video shot by bystanders on the sidewalk, two more officers can be seen pulling up and hopping out of a police cruiser, one immediately pulling out a stun gun and rushing to Omar while the other brings one of the men recording in the vehicle to the ground.

Omar said when the officers called in backup, they pepper-sprayed him and placed a spit mask over his face.