Two reports commissioned by the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) have shown that arrests without cause are discriminatory. A moratorium on this police practice recommended by the researchers has however been rejected by the police chief Fady Dagher, who considers that it is a “symbolic measure”. A statement refuted by researcher Massimiliano Mulone, who calls on the City of Montreal and the Ministry of Public Security to intervene.
The statement by the head of the SPVM at a press conference on June 22 is “deeply contradictory”, believes the professor of criminology at the University of Montreal, since discriminatory arrests have “concrete consequences” for those repeatedly targeted by the police. .
Fady Dagher has indeed indicated that he preferred to introduce other reforms, such as the recruitment of police officers from visible minorities or the revision of the promotion process within his organization.
“The two are not mutually exclusive. You can do both at the same time. And then, when you stop practicing, you have an immediate impact on part of the Montreal population. Immediate,” Mulone said.
The researcher specifies that the names of those arrested also remain in police databases and that this can have a very real impact on citizens. According to him, a person arrested several times, even if these arrests never lead to criminal offenses, can arouse suspicion.
In an interview transcribed in the report, an officer explains that she was questioned during her job interview with the police department about arrests dating back to her youth.
The moratorium recommended by the team of researchers, of which Mr. Mulone is a part, targets any arrest that is “not justified by a criminal investigation or by a reasonable suspicion of illegal activity”. It stems from scientific data collected between 2014 and 2021 which demonstrates that racial profiling persists in this type of intervention.
According to the report made public at the end of June, indigenous people were 6 times more likely to be arrested than white people. Black people, 3.5 times, and Arab people, 2.6 times in 2021.
The existence of “systemic biases” in SPVM practices had already been demonstrated in 2019 as part of a first report commissioned by the service.
“Mr. Dagher consciously decides to continue a discriminatory practice until one day there is a change. I find that unjustifiable, I don’t understand how you can justify that, ”says Mr. Mulone.
“I would have preferred Mr. Dagher to be very honest, to say: ‘Listen, I would like to do this moratorium, because it’s clear that it’s discriminatory, but I can’t do it. […] ‘Cause if I do, you’re going to have a divestment from your policeman. All the other reforms that I’m trying to put in place, they’re going to be defeated and I won’t be able to move forward,” says Massimiliano Mulone. “They are perhaps pragmatic, they realize that they really are not able to impose something like that, and that is worrying,” he continues.
Contacted by The duty, the SPVM indicates that “all populations, even racialized communities, tell us that they want the police to intervene without bias, while being respected and treated fairly. Differential treatment or perceived as such as well as systemic racism are problems, and the director is committed to working to solve them at the source”.
Mr. Mulone is not surprised that the SPVM decided not to impose the moratorium. But he expected the City of Montreal and the Ministry of Public Security to intervene to impose it. “For a new police chief, it takes courage […] It is very easy to mobilize public opinion in the media and political space against such a ban”, believes the researcher.
Contacted by The duty, the office of Mayor Valérie Plante had indicated that she did not wish to intervene in the decision of Fady Dagher. The Minister of Public Security, François Bonnardel, agrees with the decision taken by the police chief.
“With Bill 14, we have chosen to regulate this practice rather than prohibit it. We do not want to deprive the police of a useful lever for their mission, ”wrote the minister on his Twitter account following the publication of the report. His office declined further comment.
More watched than criminals
As part of their research, the academics conducted interviews with 69 police department officers. Most of the police officers interviewed associate, for their part, the cessation of arrests with an increase in criminal activity and a proliferation of firearms in the streets. “Fewer arrests, fewer court appearances, fewer trials at the courthouse,” said one of the police officers quoted in the report.
“This police discourse [expliquant] that arrest is necessary for public safety, it works because people are convinced that the police are the number one reason why there is not an explosion of crime in society. Which is not true […]there is no scientific data showing how [l’interpellation] is a useful tool,” says Mulone.
For the majority of police officers interviewed in the report, the deployment of the new policy on stops, which requires officers to explain the reason for their stop, is linked to the demotivation and disengagement of troops. Many share the feeling that they are now “more watched than the criminals”, and that the policy does not serve to improve relations with visible minorities.
Only 15% of the police officers questioned agreed with the idea that there is a problem of racism within the SPVM, and that concrete actions are needed to transform police practices. Visible minorities are overrepresented among them. Every day, they witness discriminatory behavior from their colleagues.
Some testified to having themselves been victims of these prejudices, frequently targeted by questioning, or repeatedly rejected in their requests for promotion. “Several claim that their racialized identity has harmed their careers, reporting multiple rejections of requests for promotion, as well as the observation of the ethnocultural homogeneity of the high spheres of the SPVM”, indicates the report.
No legal basis
“Police arrests have no legal basis. It is not part of the powers conferred on the police, either by law or by Common Law, that is to say the decisions of the courts. It is an arbitrary practice that generates profiling,” emphasizes Laurence Guénette, coordinator of the League for Rights and Freedoms. The organization has been lobbying the government since last February to ban all police arrests without cause.
Alain Babineau, the spokesperson for the Red Coalition which campaigns against racial profiling, is not convinced that a moratorium is the best way to intervene. Having followed Nova Scotia’s ban on police stops since 2019, he wasn’t sure the measure had gone far enough to end allegations of racism against police departments. He also wondered how such a moratorium could be systematically applied.
His organization is set to release its own recommendations supporting the report this week.
“If they put a moratorium in place, it could actually backfire on the leader. People will demand his resignation, ”said the ex-policeman.
“Frankly, in all the history of the SPVM, this chief of police is probably our best chance to change the culture of the SPVM. So we better be careful what we wish for,” he says.