A former Barrie police officer involved in a violent arrest captured on video nearly two years ago has pleaded guilty to assault days after leaving the force.
Jason Stump spoke in a Barrie courtroom Monday in connection with the Feb. 4, 2021, incident on Dunlop Street.
A video of that incident, which was posted on social media at the time, shows a police officer hitting a man in the head with what appeared to be a stun gun while pinning him to the ground and threatening to “set him on fire [him] up.”
The man was eventually taken into custody and charged with disorderly conduct and assault for attempting to resist arrest.
But after the video surfaced, then-Barrie Police Chief Kimberly Greenwood asked the Ontario Provincial Police to conduct an independent investigation into the arrest, which ultimately led to the charges against Stamp.
The Crown and defense submitted an agreed statement of facts as part of Stamp’s plea agreement.
The court heard that Stamp had witnessed a man named Skylar Kent riding a skateboard through the intersection on Dunlop Street and decided to stop him and issue him a ticket.
Kent then directed several expletives at Stamp, the court was told.
The skateboarder initially continued on his way after receiving the ticket. But when Stump tried to pull him a second time, he didn’t stop, leading to an altercation.
“I tried to keep going because I figured he couldn’t pull me over twice in a row like that,” Kent told CTV News Barrie in 2001.
In his ruling, the judge in the case called Stamp’s behavior “appalling and abhorrent,” adding that it constituted a “gross breach of his duty as a police officer, and that duty is to protect the community.”
She ended up giving him a six-month suspended sentence, including three months of house arrest.
The end of the criminal case comes after Stamp officially resigned from the Barrie Police Department on Friday.
“Our employees adhere to the highest standards of professionalism and conduct in the performance of their duties. We share the community’s concern when a police officer is involved in a situation that negatively impacts public trust, and we thank everyone for their patience as this case works its way through the court system,” Barrie Police Chief Rich Johnston said in a release for timely news.
With files from CTV News Barrie.
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