The man who sued the Victoria police after an officer kicked and kneed him during an arrest caught on video has reached an out-of-court settlement with the department.

Images of the forcible arrest of Tyler Archer amid a drunken bar brawl in 2010 went viral after they were uploaded to YouTube.

article continues below

Neither Victoria police nor Archer’s lawyer, Richard Neary, would discuss the details of the settlement because of a non-disclosure agreement.

Victoria police would only say they spent $285,926 on “litigation management” in 2014, which includes settlements, damages, mediation, judicial case conferences, civil court actions, the Human Rights Tribunal process and some Police Act matters.

The figure also includes the legal fees relating to a B.C. Supreme Court case where a woman claimed she was wrongfully arrested by Victoria police in 2002, said department spokesman Bowen Osoko. A judge found no excessive force and dismissed her case, but “the recoverable costs from the plaintiff were only a fraction of the legal costs required to defend the action,” Osoko said.

The litigation budget for 2013 was $250,000.

Neary said the Archer settlement happened several months ago, but both the department and Archer have kept quiet.

“It’s nice to have it behind him, certainly,” Neary said. “I think the public hearing was obviously very important and that concluded [in 2013], so it made sense to wrap up the civil suit as well.”

A lengthy public hearing, ordered by the Police Complaint Commissioner and led by adjudicator Ben Casson, found Const. Chris Bowser abused his authority by using excessive force when he kicked and kneed the then-19-year-old in the side during the arrest on Store Street on March 21, 2010.

Bowser was suspended without pay for two days and ordered to take six hours of use-of-force re-training and participate in an anger-management assessment.

Casson ruled that the other officer involved in the arrest, Const. Brendan Robinson, made mistakes but did not abuse his authority.

A video of the arrest, posted to YouTube, has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people.

The 10-month public hearing, the longest police complaint hearing in recent B.C. history, cost taxpayers nearly half a million dollars.

Victoria police spent $278,597 on the hearing — $245,057 on the officers’ legal fees and $33,540 in overtime for officers who testified, including Bowser and Robinson.

The Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner, which ordered the public hearing, spent $170,000 on legal costs, more than double the price tag for typical public hearings.

kderosa@timescolonist.com