The proportion of visible minority citizens killed by police officers in Greater Montreal is almost as high as that of white people, while they constitute only 14% of the population, according to an analysis of the coroner’s files from 2001 to 2021 carried out. through The duty. They account for 44% of deaths, compared to 48% for white people.
The story of Jean René Junior Olivier is not without echoing other deaths that have taken place over the past two decades, involving visible minorities in crisis, known to have mental health problems. or having expressed suicidal ideation.
In the last seven years in Greater Montreal alone, half of the men shot by the police were black and destabilized. Alain Magloire, René Gallant, Pierre Coriolan, Nicholas Gibbs, Sheffield Matthews and more recently Jean René Junior Olivier, all were killed during a police intervention.
“We always come back to the question: does black life count? Yes, Pierre Coriolan was in distress. We were in front of a man in crisis. But he was also a black man, ”says Nargess Mustapha, co-founder of Hoodstock, a community organization created in the wake of the death of Freddy Villanueva, an 18-year-old Latino shot dead by a police officer in Montreal-North in 2008.
Jean René Junior Olivier’s mother, Marie-Mireille Bence, wonders if the intervention with her son was “tinged with systemic, unconscious and institutionalized racism”. She plans to soon file a systemic racism complaint with the Human Rights Commission and another in police ethics against the officers involved.
A report produced this year by researchers from the sociology department of UQAM and the School of Criminology at the University of Montreal reveals that black people are nearly three times more likely than whites to be questioned by Repentigny police officers.
The Hoodstock co-founder believes that the improvements made to police training in dealing with people in crisis are a step in the right direction, but remain insufficient to address the situation. “When the police department does not address the issue of racial profiling within their institution, I do not really know how it will improve,” laments Nargess Mustapha.
Unequal access to services?
The lack of accessibility to mental health services remains a major issue in many outlying neighborhoods of Montreal. In Montreal-North, Mme Mustapha has observed the phenomenon for several years and considers it to be part of the systemic inequalities that the government must tackle. But it should not be used to justify cases of police violence.
“For the communities of Montreal-North, which are predominantly Afro-descendant and racialized or from an immigrant background, access is certainly much more difficult. Yes, there are specialized services, but there is the whole issue of mobility which also has an impact. Stakes of precariousness are added to that, ”she underlines.
According to Fama Tounkara and Ernithe Edmond, the founders of the My Mental Health Matters site, people with an immigrant background and visible minorities in need of mental health support are also less likely to seek help. “Fama and I grew up in family settings where it was difficult to find help from our parents to see mental health professionals. It was really taboo. In our parents’ generation or the one just before, when someone had mental health problems, we considered it a curse or we thought they were possessed by spirits, ”explains Ernithe Edmond, whose platform on social networks attempt to educate young people and make them aware of mental health issues.
Critical situation in Nunavik
Like visible minorities, Aboriginal communities are over-represented in the proportion of people killed by police.
For Quebec as a whole, Aboriginals (4.5% of the population) represent more than 13.5% of deaths.
The duty counted 11 Aboriginal people among those killed by police bullets. It is thus the most affected and over-represented community.
And the Nunavik Police Department is in third position among the deadliest police forces after the Sûreté du Québec and the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal with seven civilians killed, including three between 2016 and 2018.
The former deputy director of the Longueuil police force Jean-Pierre Larose agreed in February 2018 to become the chief of the Nunavik police to change the situation.
“It’s a major challenge,” he says from the outset. To have to. “I tackled the deaths during interventions upon my arrival and I am proud to say that since then there have been none! »Says Chief Larose.
The latter made electric pulse weapons available to all of its patrollers. And by December, they’ll all have a full-body camera at all times. A mixed mobile response team made up of a police officer and a social worker has also been set up in Puvirnituq, a northern village in Nunavik located on the east coast of Hudson Bay. “It’s another great success. Judicialization is reduced in 80% of cases. My wish would be to implement it in all the communities. We have already targeted another village, ”he explains.
“I think that these are tools that have contributed to reducing the use of force, to reducing police interventions that cause injury or death,” adds the chief of the Nunavik police, who is still worried. the lack of 30 permanent police officers within his team.