“It is undeniable that the phenomenon of racial profiling has been occurring within the Montreal Police Department (SPVM) for many years.” These are the opening words of the recent judgment in the Superior Court of Quebec covering the years 2017 to 2019.
The judge specifies that “the City recognizes its responsibility for the damages suffered by victims of racial profiling committed by SPVM police officers,” concluding that “the phenomenon of racial profiling” at the SPVM “is systemic.” Yes, yes, systemic. This racial profiling violates fundamental rights, in addition to causing a series of damages for victims: physical and psychological injuries, trauma, damage to reputation, loss of time, energy and money in the justice system, etc.
This judgment is largely based on two highly critical reports of police arrests signed by colleagues Victor Armony, Mariam Hassaoui and Massimiliano Mulone. In addition, the current head of the SPVM, Fady Dagher, acknowledged during his testimony before the Superior Court “the existence of racial profiling and systemic discrimination” at the SPVM, and this has been the case for years.
However, even though the police are the primary culprits, it is the City of Montreal that is found guilty, and therefore legally and financially responsible for this conviction for racial profiling. There is thus confusion between, on the one hand, the formal and institutional responsibility of the City as the employer of the police and, on the other hand, the principle of independence of the police from municipal political power. This principle of independence could lead one to believe that the police are “responsible” for racial profiling and that they would suffer the consequences of a conviction on this subject; this is not the case.
It was the same situation last year, when the Superior Court ordered the City of Montreal to financially compensate the victims of 16 mass arrests that targeted street protests from 2011 to 2015. This could be seen as political profiling. Having an obligation to apologize, the City of Montreal had published a press release — hypocritically relegated to an obscure corner of the Web — acknowledging that the encirclement tactic had “violated certain fundamental rights,” in addition to causing harm to the victims.
A year later, we are still waiting — probably in vain — for an apology from those truly responsible for these mass arrests, including the former head of the SPVM, Marc Parent. He had boasted in 2013, in the pages of Globe and Mailthat “police forces from all over the world are now coming to learn about our crowd control techniques. And for good reason. We now have 2,500 officers specializing in crowd control.” Embarrassing…
At the time, we were given all sorts of excuses for each mass arrest, including the weather, as the ineffable spokesperson for the SPVM, Ian Lafrenière, dared to do at the time. The latter, still registered as a member of the Union des artistes in his bulletin, has since changed roles to become a member of the Coalition avenir Québec and assistant to the Minister of Public Security, then Minister responsible for Aboriginal Affairs. Whatever his role, he denied and still denies racial profiling.
What is the ethical and political responsibility of those truly responsible for this discriminatory profiling, namely the heads of the SPVM in office during the periods covered by the two judgments, Marc Parent (2010-2015), Philippe Pichet (2015-2017), Martin Prud’homme (2017-2018) and Sylvain Caron (2018-2022), the head of legal affairs Me Alain Cardinal, who retired in 2017, and the media relations agents who deny or justify these serious operational problems, including with far-fetched excuses?
Why such impunity for members of the police command in authority at the time of the reprehensible and condemned acts, who do not even have the decency to apologize publicly? Not to mention the eternal president of the Montreal Police Brotherhood, Yves Francoeur, who has denied the racial profiling of his members for years, including as a witness in the bar in this recent case.
The “rotten apple” theory is well known to specialists in police justification discourse, namely that there is no generalized problem, but only a few officers – the “apples” – who are overzealous or perhaps even racist. However, in Montreal as in many other cities, the top of the apple tree can also be rotten. And even the entire orchard.