Judge Michel Yergeau’s decision rendered on October 25 prohibiting police officers from intercepting drivers without cause, then more recently the video of a handcuffed black man suspected of having stolen his own car in a Montreal parking lot, brought back to the first up the debate on racial profiling. The Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), like other police forces, has initiated a change in culture. But does it concretely give itself the means to combat this invisible scourge?
Announced with great fanfare two years ago, the Police Stops Policy of the SPVM is considered incomplete: many recommendations to improve it have still not been followed, and two internal reports obtained first by The duty point out the organization’s weaknesses in the fight against systemic racism.
“You have to admit that it is practically impossible to fire a racist. Hence the need to do everything to ensure that he is not hired, ”wrote independent strategic advisor Frédéric Boisrond in a first report filed exactly two years ago, but never made public so far.
The Quebec sociologist of Haitian origin was recruited in the wake of the adoption of the new Policy on police arrests of the SPVM in July 2020. According to him, “it is very easy for a racist to join the ranks of the SPVM”, since there is no filter for admission, whether at CEGEP, in police techniques, or at the National Police Academy of Quebec.
Mr. Boisrond recommends that the SPVM take steps to prevent the hiring of racist police officers. Two years later, this hiring “filter” is still not applied.
“Several of my interlocutors told me that there were racists at the SPVM […] Since to date, no one has told me about the dismissal of a single racist police officer, I can deduce that we are talking about union members who are still working in the organization, ”says the sociologist in a second report submitted to management. last April, titled The culture change has begun. Contacted by The duty, Mr. Boisrond preferred to wait for the official publication of his reports before speaking publicly.
Fight against racist behavior
The new policy on police stops of the SPVM was born a few months after the publication of a report produced by researchers on racial profiling and revealing that racialized people, in particular black, Arab and indigenous people, were four to five times more likely to be arrested by the police. to Montreal.
For nearly two years, Mr. Boisrond therefore met with executives, trainers, dispatchers from the 911 Central, investigators and members of the executive of the Brotherhood of police officers.
Even if everything leads to believe that “the change of culture at the SPVM has clearly begun”, Mr. Boisrond warns that systemic racism within the organization is far from being eradicated. “What we need to work on is racist behavior,” he says. Mr. Boisrond, however, emphasizes the importance “for the SPVM and the Fraternity to openly recognize systemic racism”.
If the former director of the SPVM has officially recognized the phenomenon, this is still not the case of the Montreal police union, which did not wish to comment on the sociologist’s reports. “We met Mr. Boisrond on several occasions, invited him to address the Fraternity’s board of directors and read his reports with interest,” says Martin Desrochers, director of communications for the police union. “The Brotherhood is obviously strongly opposed to any form of racial profiling. Unfortunately, it is common to jump to conclusions too quickly when it comes to qualifying an event,” he adds.
“What is said in the car”
The gap between management’s desire to change the culture and the perception of police officers remains one of the greatest challenges. “I would like to have a magic wand and all of a sudden, all the police officers become aware, skilful in their remarks. But no, it does not happen at all like that, ”admits Yann-Cédric Quéro, head of the new division of partnerships and diversity, set up last January to fight against systemic racism at the SPVM.
In the spring of 2022, Mr. Quéro set up an initiative as part of the week of action against racism. “We had printed small diplomas where everyone said: ‘I am mobilizing against racism'”, says the man who quickly realized that not all his colleagues shared his enthusiasm.
“It was not everyone, even people whose ideas I knew about it, who spontaneously had the freedom, the audacity, to stand up to say: ‘I stand up against racism.’ There are people who did not display it, others who put it on their desks […] We cannot expect that in six months, we will no longer have discrimination problems at the SPVM and in Quebec,” he notes.
The researcher and professor of criminology at the University of Montreal Massimiliano Mulone says that, during his research on police forces, whether in Montreal or Repentigny, he was also able to observe this discrepancy.
“In Repentigny, the police told us that they did not know any racist colleagues. In Montreal, they will say that “2 or 3 got lost in there out of the 4000 police officers, but [qu’ils n’en connaissent] not personally”. Generally speaking, you are going to have people who are deeply convinced that these accusations are false,” observes the researcher.
In office for twenty years, a police officer from a diverse background who requested anonymity for fear of exposing himself to the judgment of his peers, testifies to the existence of a “police subculture” that he don’t think you’ll see it change in his lifetime. “This is something that will take decades to change. We’re going to talk to each other, but we always say “what’s said in the car stays in the car”. Not talking about it doesn’t mean the problem doesn’t exist. We settle this between us. »
Frédéric Boisrond does not mince words in his second report, noting himself the presence of this “sub-culture”. He writes that the SPVM, like police services in Canada in general, has been “impacted by policies put in place by homophobes, misogynists and racists, policies that are sometimes pernicious, but more often enshrined in law. and that it will take time for the culture to change. “The police will still be a “for a few years”white, working class, male enclave”. Here again, the SPVM is no exception to this reality”, indicates the sociologist.
Decontaminate the vocabulary
The fight against racism within the police force must also go through the use of a vocabulary “decontaminated” of any reference to an ethnocultural origin.
“Proof that it is difficult to change vocabulary, I was told that the SPVM no longer used the expression “street gang”, notes Frédéric Boisrond in his first report. This is certainly the case in official communications. Nonetheless, over the past few months, I have heard it at virtually every staff encounter. »
Mr. Boisrond also invited the SPVM to dissociate itself from the definition of “street gang” as found on the Public Safety Canada website, which notably mentions “the same ethnic or racial affiliation” among its criteria.
He recommends not only to include “criminal group” as a replacement expression in the reflexes of the staff, but also to “pursue efforts to identify and eradicate any other discriminatory vocabulary in this workplace”.
Yann-Cédric Quéro confirms that the expression “street gang” is indeed still deeply rooted in institutions and that it is very difficult to get rid of it. “The institutions that hold us accountable every year use a “street gang” heading. We are looking for a different vocabulary, but inventing something that has the same power is complicated,” he says.
Training will also be offered this month by the SPVM to dispatchers at the 911 Central so that they learn how to decontaminate racist, homophobic and misogynistic calls before transmitting the information to the police. This initiative is a response to the concern expressed by Mr. Boisrond that “the police be used as the armed wing of racists”.
An incomplete policy
By the SPVM’s own admission, the Policy on police arrests is still considered to be a work in progress and has been the subject of numerous recommendations since its presentation.
“The policy of interpellation may mean nothing, absolutely nothing,” warns Mr. Boisrond, insisting that it must be better framed. He considers that the greatest weakness of this policy is the notion of stops based on “observable facts” (as opposed to baseless or random stops). ” This concept […] remains vague and appeals to the subjective,” he explains.
“The arrest form now has a number that must be approved by the police officer’s supervisor,” said François Harrisson Gaudreau, spokesperson for the SPVM, who considers the addition of fields to be completed in the arrest forms as a way to prevent racial profiling.
A team of coaches in police arrests responsible for giving workshops explaining what is expected of police officers under the new policy has also been put in place. However, the question of racial profiling is only addressed through statistics, and no concrete examples of bad practices are given. Mr. Boisrond thus recommends that the SPVM “integrate into training programs scenarios based on examples of what the organization considers to be observable facts” and “on situations where there may be racist behavior on both sides. ‘other “.
Another shortcoming of the policy: the decision to fill out arrest forms is left to the discretion of the police officer. However, the public security commission of the City of Montreal demanded in 2021 that the SPVM systematize the production of a file for all police arrests and that it make all this data accessible to the public. “A person arrested is not required to identify themselves, so the complexity of starting to count everything is that you fall into Statistics Canada mode each time you speak to someone. That would be untenable in a Montreal context. You have to understand that the information found in these sheets is what is of interest to the police community,” explains Mr. Harrisson Gaudreau.
In his judgment rendered on October 25, Judge Michel Yergeau considers that roadside interceptions “still remain today in the blind spot of the fight [contre le] racial profiling against black drivers”.
Roadside checks are still excluded from the SPVM’s policy on arrests, which was the subject of another recommendation from the Commission de la sécurité publique.
Read tomorrow in The duty the second part of our investigation on racial profiling, devoted to traffic interceptions.