Officer witness says Matthew Green seemed 'anti-police' in interaction

A Hamilton police officer who witnessed a contentious interaction between another officer and a city councillor told a hearing Friday that the way the councillor spoke to his partner rubbed him the wrong way.

Const. Derrick Thomson testified in a misconduct hearing for fellow officer Const. Andrew Pfeifer, who is charged under the Police Services Act with conducting an improper street check.

Thomson said Coun. MatthewGreen seemed "anti-police" and aggressive.

"It was a simple stop just to check on someone's wellbeing," Thomson said. "It's usually a quick conversation. I didn't understand the anger behind it and the tone."

'I've never seen anyone stand there before'

Thomson's cruiser was behind Pfeifer's when Pfeifer pulled up to the Claremont Access underpass in April 2016 and talked to Green, the city's first black councillor.

Thomson said based on how Green appeared that day "tucked behind a wall," and looking left a few times, standing in a muddy area he would've stopped to check on Green's wellbeing, as Pfeifer said he did that day.

"It's at the base of a hill, it's a muddy area, he has nice clothes on," Thomson said to Green's lawyer, Wade Poziomka. "I've never seen anyone stand there before."

Green, however, has contended the stop was racially motivated and that he felt targeted while he was simply waiting for the bus, out of the wind.

Once Green told Pfeifer that he was waiting for the bus out of the wind, Thomson said he was satisfied that Green was OK. Thomson leaned out of his window and told Green to tell Pfeifer that they were holding up traffic and that they should move along.

Pfeifer and Green have said that the interaction continued beyond that, but Thomson said he didn't remember that.

Stop wasn't racially motivated, Thomson says

Thomson told Pfeifer's lawyer, Bernard Cummins, that he didn't believe his partner officer stopped Green because he's black.

"I wouldn't want to work with someone who did that," he said. "I would report that."

But he admitted in cross-examination to Brian Duxbury, prosecuting the case for the Hamilton Police Service, that he only knows the motivation for a stop when an officer tells him that.

"If someone stops someone because they're black, if they don't voice that, unless they tell me they're doing it for that reason, I wouldn't know," he told Poziomka.

The hearing adjourned early Friday afternoon. Closing statements are expected to take place November 16.

After the hearing, Green said, at some times this week in cross-examination, he felt like the accused rather than the complainant.

He got choked up talking about the people who have attended the hearing this week.

Cummins, representing Pfeifer, declined to comment while the case is still ongoing, as did Duxbury, serving as prosecutor on behalf of the Hamilton Police Service.

kelly.bennett@cbc.ca