The province’s police watchdog is appealing for witnesses into an altercation between Toronto police and a 35-year-old man with schizophrenia who suffered a serious shoulder injury his mother said will require surgery on Christmas Day.

“He’s not a criminal,” she said at her home in Toronto’s Weston neighbourhood on Sunday. “He’s just a guy with a sickness.”

The Star has not talked to the man and is not identifying him or his mother because he suffers from a serious mental illness.

The Star obtained a pair of videos showing some of the altercation, which took place at an apartment building at 300 Dufferin St., near Dufferin and King St. W., at approximately 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 12.

The cellphone videos, taken by a bystander, show more than a half-dozen police officers in the lobby of the apartment building, outside an elevator. A man can be heard loudly and repeatedly shouting from inside the elevator: “Mom! Mom!”

The video shows two police officers kneeling inside the elevator. The injured man cannot be seen, nor does the video appear to show the interaction that caused his injuries. The start of the incident also is not shown.

Cellphone video taken by a bystander and obtained by the Star shows a police interaction with a mentally ill man at a Toronto apartment building on Dec. 12. Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit is investigating after the man suffered a serious shoulder injury in the incident.

Toronto police spokesperson Const. Allyson Douglas-Cook on Sunday said the force has no comment on the matter while it is under investigation by the Special Investigations Unit, the police watchdog organization which probes police-involved deaths, serious injuries and allegations of sexual assault.

The man has been charged with assaulting police and is scheduled to appear in a Toronto court in January.

Police were called to the building for a report of a domestic disturbance that is unrelated to the man who was injured, according to a statement from the SIU.

“Get off my back,” the man says at one point in the video.

Later, one of the officers inside the elevator says: “Give me your hand ... co-operate, just give me your hand.”

At another point, the other officer says: “I don’t know what’s wrong with you.”

Two officers can later be seen rushing into the elevator.

In the video, the man is told he will be charged with assaulting police by pushing an officer.

“How could I push you against the elevator?” the man asks.

At the end of the first video, a visibly upset officer gestures toward the bystander who’s filming the incident. “Get out of the way,” he says.

In the second video, which appears to have been taken immediately after the first, a number of officers talk to the man, who continues to repeatedly shout, “Mom!”

Cellphone video taken by a bystander and obtained by the Star shows a police interaction with a mentally ill man at a Toronto apartment building on Dec. 12. Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit is investigating after the man suffered a serious shoulder injury in the incident.

The mother of the injured man told the Star he doesn’t have a criminal record. She said his right shoulder was perfectly healthy before the incident, and he now requires surgery at Toronto Western Hospital on Christmas Day.

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“It was a perfectly good shoulder,” she said. “Now it’s mess up. The nerve is damaged … The doctor said that it’s going to take long to heal.”

“It’s very bad,” she said. “He has numbness in a few of his fingers”

She described her son as “skinny,” standing well under six-foot and weighing less than 180 pounds.

He was diagnosed with schizophrenia after high school and is on disability for his mental illness, she said.

“He on medication,” she said. “When he’s not on the medication, he gets hostile.”

She said that her son told her he was on the elevator when several police officers arrived.

“He said, ‘Hurry up and come on the elevator.’ That’s when the argument started,” she said, relaying her son’s account.

She said police should be trained to calm things down when dealing with mentally ill people like her son.

“They must know how to take care of sick people,” she said. “Don’t do it in an angry fashion.”

She said she plans to be with her son on Christmas Eve, when he’s admitted to hospital, and Christmas Day, when he undergoes his surgery.

“I’m just going to give him a hug and tell him that I love him,” she said.

An SIU statement released Wednesday said police were leaving the scene of their domestic call when the incident occurred.

“The man was arrested in the lobby and then transported to hospital for treatment of a serious injury,” the SIU statement said.

Two SIU investigators have been assigned to the case.

The SIU asks witnesses to call 1-800-787-8529 and upload video via the SIU website.

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