A Woodstock man whose vehicle was stolen and later recovered is among three people suing the Waterloo Regional Police Service and two other police boards after an administrative blunder led police to believe they were in a stolen vehicle.
A statement of claim filed by three plaintiffs against the WRPS board, York Regional Police Services board and Woodstock Police Service board for a combined $600,000 says their gunpoint arrest while driving the vehicle back to Woodstock was the result of an administrative failure by York regional police.
All three are seeking damages for physical and psychological harms, past and future loss of income, medical care and treatment they say was the result of police negligence and excessive force used during their arrest last fall.
On Oct. 29, 2023, the Woodstock man reported that his 2012 Toyota Rav 4 was stolen to Waterloo regional police.
Four days later he got a call from York regional police in Vaughan saying they had recovered his vehicle.
The man, a friend and his young son drove to Vaughan the next day to pick the Rav4 up and a police officer handed him paperwork confirming the vehicle's release back to him.
But while driving home the same day, they were pulled over by Woodstock police.
The claim says as they were pulling to the shoulder, the car was "suddenly surrounded" by other police cruisers from Woodstock and Waterloo region.
Several officers got out and approached the Rav4 with guns drawn, telling the driver he was in a stolen vehicle despite his insistence that he had paperwork to prove otherwise.
Police "ignored him," according the claim, ordered the three occupants out of the vehicle at gunpoint, forced two of them to the ground, and handcuffed all of them while placing them under arrest.
The plaintiffs were detained for more than 15 minutes while the arresting officers confirmed with York regional police that they had failed to change the status of the vehicle in the system to inform other jurisdictions the car wasn't stolen.
The plaintiffs claim the defendants are liable for the "intentional torts of battery, assault, unlawful and wrongful arrest, detention, excessive use of force, negligence in the conduct of their investigation" and breach of the plaintiffs' rights.
They hold York Regional Police Service responsible for the administrative error and blame Woodstock and Waterloo regional police for unlawful use of force, claiming that proper training would have resulted in a better outcome.
That outcome resulted in a slew of "serious and permanent" psychological injuries and impairments for all three plaintiffs, including anxiety and depression, memory loss, and post traumatic stress disorder.
They've lost income because of the incident and future working capacity has been significantly impacted, reads the claim.
The plaintiffs are continuing medical and rehabilitative treatments and assessments, all of which have been paid for out of pocket.
