The family of Pacifique Niyokwizera is suing the Quebec City Police Department (SPVQ) for $180,000. The young man had been seriously injured during an altercation with the police which occurred near the Dagobert bar last fall.
Posted at 7:00 a.m.
The police operation deemed brutal took place on the night of November 26 to 27 near the Dagobert bar, in Old Quebec.
When the establishment closed, an argument broke out. Security had asked customers to leave the premises.
The police on site then asked the groups of young people to move away from the bar once outside.
“Some got angry, asked the police to explain why it was wrong to stay on the street,” the victim told AFP. The Press.
The tone is raised.
The 18-year-old man was sprayed with pepper spray by one of the officers.
Indignant, he would have taken out his phone to film his interactions with the police.
One of the officers allegedly asked him to approach “to discuss”, before hitting him with a truncheon, indicates the document of the lawsuit filed Friday by Mand Fernando Belton, who represents the family.
Pacific Niyokwizera reportedly received several blows to the face and ribs. According to his testimony, one of the police officers suggested that he “do this kind of stuff in Montreal and go back there”.
When Mr. Niyokwizera replies that he lives in Quebec, one of the police officers retorts: “That’s it”, he argues.
“He experienced humiliation and outrage as a victim of racial profiling and being publicly treated as a dangerous criminal,” the lawsuit argues.
When the officers released him after a brief moment in the patrol car, he was reportedly alone in the cold, without a coat or a cell phone. At the hospital, he was diagnosed with a concussion.
“I didn’t have my cell phone and I had lost my cards when they knocked me to the ground. I didn’t know how to return home. »
Video of the altercation went viral on social media. The mayor of Quebec, Bruno Marchand, said he was “troubled” by the filmed sequence.
Pacific Niyokwizera was also arrested months later in connection with charges of sexual assault and sexual interference with a minor, revealed The Journal of Montreal last April.
Family requests
For those close to the young Pacifique Niyokwizera, the police operation last November had serious repercussions, in addition to reviving terrible memories.
The victim’s mother and two sisters are each claiming $10,000 from the City of Quebec in connection with the psychological damage suffered after the intervention.
Pascaline Ndagijimana, mother of the young man, settled in Quebec in 2013 after taking refuge in Rwanda, Uganda and Congo.
“Seeing her son being beaten by the police brought her back to her own memories of the war in Rwanda from which she fled and where she was also beaten by soldiers,” the court document reads. .
The police ethics commissioner of Quebec and the Quebec City police service had each opened an investigation in the wake of this police intervention. Shortly after the media coverage of the affair, five agents of the SPVQ had been suspended. Four of them have since been reinstated. The fifth police officer remains assigned to administrative duties.
“On the eve of the dark two-year anniversary of the death of George Floyd, there is reason to wonder why in Quebec we continue to see racialized people undergo this kind of treatment by the police, which constitutes racial profiling” , said M.and Belton.