A veteran police psychologist specializing in the application of force has reviewed videotaped encounters between Williams Lake Mounties and young First Nations men in their custody, and says the conduct displayed ranges from acceptable to alarming.

One video shows a May 6 incident in which Oren Mostad asks an officer to return his two confiscated hunting rifles. The men exchange words before the officer takes Mostad to the ground, where he is repeatedly punched.

"In that situation, I don't have a lot of difficulty with what the young member did," psychologist Mike Webster told CTV News.

Police work can get ugly, Webster said, especially when it comes to subduing people.

"Part of ‘hands-on' involves things like knee strikes and hand strikes and so on," he said. "It's not pretty, I know your viewers don't like to see that."

The videos, released on Wednesday by the BC Civil Liberties Association, are silent, making it difficult to evaluate officers' behaviour – but one encounter, in which Curtis Billy is shown being roughly subdued by several officers, Webster called "egregious."

"The thing that's outstanding in this is the extremely poor supervision," he said.

In the video, Staff Sgt. Warren Brown is shown leading the charge in taking Billy to the ground after guards apparently gave him a lecture for covering a detachment surveillance camera with a wet paper towel.

Webster says he should have stood back and supervised the situation instead of rushing in.

"I would say this individual needs a tune up," he said. "This individual is likely operating two or three ranks above what he ought to be. Not much skill present there."

The subsequent dog pile onto Billy is no surprise, Webster added – officers were following the lead of their supervisor.

Mounties' response

Mounties responded to the controversy in a written statement released Thursday morning, saying that "using force at times is a reality of police work and not something we take lightly."

It alleges that the in-custody men in each of the videos had refused to comply with officers' requests before force was used.

They also say the intoxicated man who was filmed while restrained to a chair for three hours, during which time he wet himself, had been repeatedly warned not to climb onto a sink and toilet in the cell.

He was restrained to prevent him from hurting himself, police say.

The release also denied a strained relationship between the detachment and local First Nations communities.

Local aboriginal leaders gave "very positive feedback" to the detachment for communication, community involvement and police response in a management review earlier this year, it said.

But Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, says there is a systemic problem with how Mounties in some parts of B.C. deal with aboriginal people.

"I have to admit that the pattern ripples out far beyond Williams Lake," he said.

"There are similar instances of deterioration of a relationship between aboriginal people and the RCMP, excessive use of force, a litany of complaints. So I think we have a problem here."

A probe into the videos has been launched by the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, as has an internal force investigation.

While Insp. Tim Shields acknowledges more work needs to be done and officers should show respect, he says there is a limit.

"If that person starts swearing in our face and telling us there's no way they're going to leave a cell or be fingerprinted or photographed, yes, we're going to use force," Shields said.

The RCMP is asking the public to reserve judgment until the investigation is complete, pointing out that without any audio from the surveillance cameras, there might be more to the story.

With a report from CTV British Columbia's Brent Shearer