Half a dozen officers cluster around a writhing, prostrate student in a fluorescent-lit university hallway, quiet save for the officers yelling as they repeatedly kick, punch and knee the suspect.
The video, shot on an iPhone and posted on YouTube by a politics professor, is sparking controversy beyond the University of Western Ontario, where campus and London police arrested a student they say was violent and disoriented Wednesday evening.
The thousands of responses that the 92-second clip has garnered demonstrate the multiple layers of scrutiny now facing heavily policed Canadian campuses.
"It's really turned a lot of people's attention towards the availability of video to sort of scrutinize police conduct and use that to hold them to account at a later date," said Simon Fraser University criminologist David MacAlister.
Friends of the 22-year-old criminology student, now charged with assaulting an officer, resisting arrest and mischief under $5,000, insist their friend would never act in a threatening manner.
But Western campus police say Irnes Zeljkovic, who appeared in court yesterday and has been freed on bail with his London-based mother as surety, attacked officers and could have caused far more harm to officers and students had he not been restrained quickly.
Campus police got a call around 5 p.m. that a student was acting erratically. When officers arrived, he had allegedly barricaded himself in a professor's office.
The security group's director, Elgin Austen, said that when two campus police officers confronted the student, he charged them, fists flying, and fled in a shower of the officers' pepper spray. The confrontation resumed a few minutes later on the main floor, where four campus officers and at least two London police officers pinned the man to the ground.
The video shows the student being kicked, punched and kneed multiple times. It also shows him being hit from behind with a nightstick, which apart from pepper spray is the only weapon the campus police are allowed to carry.
Mr. Austen said Mr. Zeljkovic was bleeding and suffered a minor leg injury by the time he was led in handcuffs out of the building. Mr. Austen said alcohol likely wasn't a factor, although investigators are assessing whether Mr. Zeljkovic had taken any drugs or medication.
From his lab on the main floor, geography student Daniel Trudgeon saw a retinue of campus police walk by, radios squawking, followed shortly after by the suspect, struggling with an older officer before being wrestled to the ground by others.
"It seemed like a reasonable response. ... I could see him resisting and trying to fight back and holding his arms in. He was completely unresponsive to the officers," he said.
Anne-Marie Flood has known Mr. Zeljkovic since they went to high school together in London. She said he doesn't do drugs and is a model student. "I can't see anything that he would have done to make them actually beat him up that bad," she said. "He's usually a really happy guy."
Such high-profile tragedies as the shooting at Dawson College in Montreal have made it all too clear how volatile an environment a campus can be for young and troubled individuals. That's led schools across Canada to devote more attention - and dollars - to campus security in recent years.
Rodney Curran, president of Ontario Association of College and University Security Administrators and head of special constables at Wilfrid Laurier University, said Ontario recently gave schools money to establish threat assessment teams to respond to signs of troubling behaviour on campus.
The teams, made up of counsellors, security officers and mental health experts are designed to respond to troubling behaviour before it gets to an angry confrontation n a professors office. "We are trying to nip problems in the bud," he said.
It's not just students who are filming the actions of university police. The number of security cameras on campuses have soared. At Laurier's Waterloo campus they have jumped from 10 to 266 in four years, Mr. Curran said.
"I don't think we should be afraid of our actions being filmed by students with cell phones," he said. "If we are acting properly, it shouldn't be a problem. We have to be accountable."
Western has more than 300 closed-circuit cameras around campus, several of them both inside and outside the social science centre where Wednesday's struggle took place. Footage from those cameras is being reviewed. The university is also modifying its monitoring system so more cameras are watched more often.
Michael Dorm, who runs a U.S. based non-profit that consults on campus security, believes a heightened sensitivity towards campus safety is fuelled mostly by media coverage and liability concerns, rather than any increase in incidents.
There is not doubt, he said, that videos, such as the one posted from Western are a factor. "Video is such a powerful communication tool," he said. "One 10-second clip can leave a lasting impression."
