Yes. Perhaps I could answer in English. Thank you.
In my experience and in the experience of members of my law firm and other lawyers with whom I speak, private security guards have less training, have less experience with the use of force than do police officers. To become a police officer, it's a much more rigorous process than it is to become a security officer. In many of my dealings with cases involving security officers, there is a tendency to resort to the use of force when such force may not be necessary.
I'll provide you with a very poignant example of a person I defended a year ago who was a university student, a 23-year-old female. She was at the Rideau Centre and a fight broke out among other females. She tried to separate the parties. Security had not arrived right at the beginning of the fight. When they did arrive she was in between the belligerents, trying to separate them. Four security guards approached her, grabbed her, put her arms behind her back, and tried to handcuff her. When she tried to explain that she wasn't a belligerent party and she was trying to resist, in effect, they grounded her, which is security guard speak for they took her down. They sat on her and they ended up pressing her against the wall. She ended up in the security office in cuffs for several hours before she was released.
For about a year while she was out on bail, her schooling was completely under threat. She was in a professional program. If she had been convicted of an offence of assault—and assaulting a peace officer, no less, is what she was charged with—her entire career would have been down the drain. This is what I saw as something that was not uncommon, from the experience of my colleagues and other members of my firm. It really causes me concern. When I cross-examined these security officers, they didn't seem to know the boundaries of their duties.