A former Maple Spring protester has just filed a civil lawsuit for $122,500 against the police and Stéfanie Trudeau, also known as “matricule 728”. Ten years later, he accuses them respectively of having beaten him and sprayed him with cayenne pepper.
Posted at 6:38 p.m.
Olivier Grondin, who was 22 years old at the time, deplored having been the victim of “numerous nightmares, panic attacks and vomiting, in addition to a general feeling of anxiety” in the days and weeks following the events described in his pursuit.
On April 26, 2012, the literary creation student at UQAM said he took part in a demonstration during which officers from the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) “dispersed irritant gas using explosive projectiles “. A group of police officers hit him directly with the tip of their truncheons after having attempted several dispersal maneuvers, he says.
Mr. Grondin, who took part in a hundred student demonstrations according to the court document, would have replied by asking the peace officers for their service numbers. To which one of them would have retorted “Criss your camp otherwise, I will put you under arrest”.
From his statement, the student instead continued to ask for the service numbers of the police officers. Faced with this attitude, “he received a kick directly in his right flank, as well as a series of blows with a truncheon and kicks which reached his back, his arms and his head”, according to the prosecution.
Number 728
On May 20, 2012, once again during a Maple Spring demonstration, Olivier Grondin said he was sprayed with cayenne pepper by police officer Stéfanie Trudeau. The prosecution document explains that the latter “grabbed his pepper spray and discharged it, aiming directly [le visage du jeune homme] less than one meter away and without prior warning”.
The student had just seen the policewoman block the path and then “violently push back” a young woman who told him she wanted to go through to return home, he said. He would have shouted to attract the attention of Stéfanie Trudeau, whose arm “rushed to hit the young woman”.
“If you want to squeal, I can eat it,” Olivier Grondin told the SPVM employee, after hitting himself “violently” in the face twice. That’s when he was targeted.
Some of these facts are also observable in a YouTube video accumulating nearly 800,000 views. This video was “looped to illustrate police brutality and to comment on the many legal and media escapades of police officer Trudeau”, underlines the official document.
This lawsuit, in which Grondin is asking the City of Montreal for damages, must now go to the Civil Division of the Superior Court.