Vancouver police jail guard sentenced to house arrest after assaulting detainees

WARNING: This story contains details of violence against an Indigenous teen.

A Vancouver Police Department (VPD) special constable, serving as a jail guard, has been sentenced to six months of house arrest after pleading guilty to assaulting two detainees in January 2023.

Omar Ahmed Flores was charged a year after the assaults, one of which involved a 17-year-old Indigenous girl.

Provincial court Judge Colleen Elden wrote in her sentencing decision the detainees assaulted by Flores were both restrained and presented no safety concerns to officers at the time.

“He committed repeated and gratuitous acts of violence against both victims while occupying a position of power and owing them a duty of care,” she wrote.

In the case of the first assault, which involved an Indigenous teenager who was intoxicated in the early hours of New Year’s Day in 2023, the judgment says that Flores punched her four times in the stomach.

Elden wrote the girl was secured in a restraint chair and wearing a spit mask at the time.

“At the time of this assault, there were nine other guards and officers present and there was plainly no exigency in the circumstances,” the judge wrote in her decision.

The girl who was assaulted by Flores was eventually released to her parents after being restrained in the chair for over six hours, according to Elden.

She had been taken into custody because officers determined she was unable to care for herself, according to the decision, something that the judge described as a “tragic irony” given the assault that ensued.

Elden was critical of police officers’ conduct during the arrest, saying that it was “quite frankly, abhorrent” and police did not need to take the teenager into custody given the circumstances of it being New Year’s Day.

“This case stands as another troubling example in this country’s long history of the mistreatment of Indigenous women,” she wrote.

“It underscores, in the clearest terms, that we can and must do better.”

2 assaults within a week

While Flores pleaded guilty to one count of assault in the case, the jail guard was involved in two separate acts of violence within a week, according to the judgment.

The second involved a man who was in custody after a bail hearing on Jan. 7, 2023, with the judge saying the detainee spat at Flores’ direction while passing him in a corridor.

While officers restrained the detainee, the judge found that Flores kicked and stomped on the man’s face, punched him and kneed him multiple times.

“It is by good fortune alone that [the detainee] did not sustain a serious injury, such as a concussion or brain injury,” the judge wrote.

“The video shows that there were no officer‑safety concerns at the time Mr. Ahmed Flores inflicted this violence.”

Elden wrote that Flores’ conduct had a serious impact on public confidence in the justice system, and that the impact on the Indigenous girl was likely particularly significant.

However, she found that there were some mitigating factors in the case — including that Flores pleaded guilty and was remorseful after the assaults.

While Flores’ defence sought a conditional discharge, saying the assaults occurred “during a discrete period of psychological and neurological impairment,” the judge ruled they had not proven that on a balance of probabilities.

Elden also stated that an initial proposal from Crown prosecutors that Flores only be handed a suspended sentence “would not adequately reflect the gravity of the offences or Mr. Ahmed Flores’ moral culpability.”

She handed him a sentence of six months’ house arrest — along with conditions to not contact the victims or possess alcohol and drugs.

Flores had remained on paid leave for the three years it took for the case to be heard, according to the judgment, and he told the court that he “has come to recognize that he is not well suited to work in the jail and intends to resign.”