Ontario’s police watchdog has cleared two Toronto cops after a 14-year-old armed robbery suspect was seriously injured in a December takedown.

The Special Investigations Unit says that officers were responding to a drug store robbery involving a handgun on Dec. 27, 2022 when they observed the suspect vehicle in the area of Highway 27 and Queen’s Plate Drive and conducted a traffic stop.

The SIU says that officers surrounded the vehicle with their firearms drawn and “repeatedly ordered” its three occupants to get out but couldn’t get into the locked vehicle at first.

The SIU says that at one point one of the two subject officers extended his baton and struck the rear driver’s side window several times but failed to break it.

More officers then arrived on scene.

The SIU says that “after some time” the 14-year-old suspect opened the rear driver’s side door and began to make his way out of the vehicle.

That’s when one of the two officers struck him several times, first with a baton and then with his legs in what the SIU described as “knee strikes or kicks.”

The second officer, meanwhile, used his “body weight and muscular power to keep the complainant pinned to the ground and assist in his handcuffing,” the SIU said.

All three suspects were eventually apprehended.

But the 14-year-old later complained of shoulder pain and was taken to hospital, where it was determined that he had a dislocated shoulder.

In a report released on Wednesday, SIU Director Joseph Martino ruled that both officers were “legally justified” in their use of force during the arrest of the boy, despite no real evidence that he physically resisted.

“Though the complainant did not seem to offer much in the way of physical resistance once the door was opened, he and his associates did delay in opening the door for several seconds,” Martino said. “Equipped with the knowledge of the likely presence of a firearm inside the Camry, that delay would have been a serious cause for concern for the officers, whose objective would have been to take the vehicle occupants into custody as soon as possible to mitigate the risk of weapons being brought into play.”

Martino pointed out in his report that the suspect vehicle had been reported stolen and previously and was involved in another armed robbery at a pharmacy “days prior.”

He said that following the arrest of the three suspects, a pellet gun was recovered in the back seat of the vehicle.