Wheatley Phelps testified this week about how he left Niagara Falls, Ont., for a distinguished career in the U.S. military, only to have it ended after he claims he was assaulted and unlawfully arrested by Niagara Regional Police officers. Niagara police deny the allegations, contained in a $2 million lawsuit.
A former globe-trotting U.S. military aircraft technician who claims his career was ruined after he was assaulted and falsely arrested by police testified in civil court this week about the impact of the “devastating” and “humiliating” encounter in his hometown of Niagara Falls, Ont.
Phelps alleges the four accosted him, choked him and prevented him from leaving his aunt’s house where he had gone to remove car parts he had been storing in her garage. He alleges the incident left him with serious, career-ending injuries. Phelps, who is Black, was testifying in front of Ontario Superior Court Justice James Ramsay via zoom from a downtown Toronto law office. He told the judge that after graduating high school and finding only menial jobs, he left Niagara Falls, where he’d seen “a lot of crap” growing up, including being “spat on as a little boy walking with my mother.”
In August 2010, he was living in Germany and about to start a job earning a salary of $108,000 , when he brought his wife and new baby to Ontario to see his ailing mother. Phelps testified he was sitting in his Suburban truck preparing to leave when several police cruisers arrived, “like something out of ‘Dukes of Hazard.’” An officer used a spotlight to look in his truck, which was filled with car parts.Phelps testified he asked what was going on, and that an officer “blew me off,” and said “you Black guys” are “on steroids.”
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