Winnipeg wins dismissal of officer’s civil claim over 2019 arrest

The City of Winnipeg has won dismissal of a police officer’s civil claim over his 2019 arrest, after a Manitoba judge found that the arresting officers had reasonable grounds and that no trial was required.

In Alexander v. The City of Winnipeg, 2026 MBKB 108, delivered August 6, 2026, Associate Chief Justice Perlmutter of the Court of King’s Bench of Manitoba granted summary judgment dismissing Keith Alexander’s amended claim for false imprisonment and arbitrary detention under section 9 of the Charter.

The two criminal charges of uttering threats had been stayed on February 2, 2022. The civil ruling does not find Alexander guilty or decide whether he actually made the alleged threats. A separate malicious-prosecution action against two other officers remained outstanding and was not dismissed by this decision.

Arrest followed an internal investigation

The Winnipeg Police Service’s Professional Standards Unit investigated allegations that Alexander had threatened another officer. The investigation ran from April to August 2019 and included eight interviews, among them an interview with Alexander in the presence of counsel.

The lead investigator said he formed a belief that reasonable and probable grounds existed to arrest Alexander. Following the unit’s practice for allegations against police officers, the file was then sent to Manitoba Prosecutions for an opinion. In October 2019, prosecutors recommended charges.

Alexander attended the unit’s headquarters with his lawyer at a pre-arranged appointment on October 29, 2019. He was arrested without a warrant and released on a promise to appear with an undertaking not to contact the officers identified in that undertaking. He was not handcuffed, searched, interrogated or placed in a cell. The arresting officer estimated the visit lasted approximately 30 minutes.

Pleading amendments allowed before the claim was dismissed

The city argued that Alexander’s proposed amendments would add a new false-imprisonment claim after the limitation period had expired. Alexander maintained that the existing pleading already included that claim and that the amendments merely supplied particulars.

Perlmutter agreed with Alexander. Read against the same alleged arrest and detention, the original pleading was sufficient to encompass false imprisonment as well as the Charter claim. The amendments did not introduce a fundamentally different factual claim. The judge therefore allowed them and assessed the city’s summary-judgment motion against the amended pleading.

That procedural success did not establish liability. The central question remained whether the arrest and detention were lawful on the information available at the time.

Reasonable grounds were not a finding of guilt

Alexander disputed the allegations and argued that the investigation was flawed and part of an effort to end his police career. He also maintained that the city had to prove he committed the alleged offences.

The judge rejected that proposed test. An arresting officer must genuinely believe reasonable and probable grounds exist, and that belief must be objectively supportable from the position of a reasonable officer. The police do not need evidence sufficient to establish a case for conviction before making an arrest.

Both arresting officers said they believed the grounds existed. Perlmutter found those beliefs objectively reasonable on the investigative record, including the accounts of the two officers reporting the alleged threats and supporting information from other interviews.

The court was not deciding the ultimate truth of the allegations or resolving the witnesses’ credibility as it would at a criminal trial. It was assessing the information received by the investigators and whether it justified the arrest.

Alexander identified inconsistencies, missing notes and investigative steps he said should have been taken. The judge acknowledged that the investigation was imperfect but found that the deficiencies and other evidence relied on did not undermine the reasonable grounds established on this record. Speculation about what missing notes might contain did not create a genuine issue requiring trial.

The judge also rejected the argument that the two reporting officers had directly caused the detention in the sense required for false imprisonment. The arresting officers had made their own decision after investigating, rather than acting on a direction from the complainants.

Necessity and consent provided further grounds

Reasonable grounds to believe an offence had been committed did not end the analysis. The court also considered the Criminal Code’s limits on arrest without a warrant, including whether the public interest could be met without arrest.

The lead investigator explained that a no-contact undertaking was needed to address the risk of further offences and could not be compelled without arrest. Alexander disputed the necessity, particularly given the time elapsed since the alleged threats. Perlmutter found no compelling evidence undermining the investigator’s explanation and no genuine issue requiring trial on that point.

As an additional, independent basis for dismissal, the judge found consent to the warrantless arrest and waiver of the related section 9 rights. That conclusion was tied to Alexander’s voluntary attendance for the stated purpose of arrest, at an appointment arranged with his lawyer and with legal advice. It was not a general rule that attending a police station amounts to waiving Charter protection.

Evidence from the separate lawsuit was not admitted

The court refused permission to use discovery evidence from the malicious-prosecution action, applying the deemed undertaking that generally confines such evidence to the proceeding in which it was obtained. Some affidavit material was also excluded as hearsay. Perlmutter said that considering the excluded evidence would not have changed the summary-judgment result.

With the amended claim dismissed, the court did not need to decide whether to consolidate the two actions or grant Alexander judgment on liability. Costs may be addressed through written submissions if the parties cannot agree.