Protesters behind 16 class actions demanded more than $ 53 million from the City of Montreal for the mass arrests carried out by officers from its police force during protests between 2011 and 2015. They will ultimately have to settle for $ 6 million.
This is what emerges from an amicable agreement adopted behind closed doors by the City’s executive committee earlier this week, found The duty.
Most of the events complained of took place between March 15, 2011 and April 9, 2015. Several of these demonstrations were aimed at denouncing the City’s by-law P-6, the two most controversial articles of which were struck down in 2016 by the Court Superior and the Court of Appeal. These concerned the ban on wearing a mask during a demonstration and the obligation to provide an itinerary to the police before a spontaneous demonstration. Mayor Valérie Plante subsequently announced in the fall of 2019 the outright repeal of this by-law, to the relief of many organizations and activists against police repression.
Mass arrests
Hundreds of people were sometimes arrested by agents of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal during some of these demonstrations. Several of them were then arrested; some were held overnight. Nearly a hundred people were notably arrested on March 15, 2015 during a demonstration against police brutality, which was surrounded by police after being declared illegal, while more than 250 arrests had taken place during a similar event in Montreal, exactly four years earlier, on March 15, 2011.
“In addition to the arrests or arrests carried out by the police, the intervention during some of the events in question also led to an extension of the detention during the transport of persons arrested to an operational center”, recall moreover decision-making documents of the Executive Committee.
Over the years, the lawsuits have accumulated to reach a total claimed compensation of $ 53.5 million intended for more than 3,000 people who were allegedly victims of the actions of Montreal police officers during various events. Individual claims thus amounted to about $ 17,000 on average.
In order to avoid holding one or more that could have stretched over time and cost the City dearly, in 2019 it attempted to hold an amicable settlement conference with the various parties involved. to try to find an out-of-court solution to this case, in the presence of a former judge of the Superior Court. These two days of discussions had not been fruitful at the time.
However, discussions subsequently resumed to lead, two years later, to an out-of-court settlement of $ 6 million that will put an end to all these class actions. This amount will be redistributed to the several thousand people affected by the accumulation of these class actions once the prosecutors’ legal fees have been reimbursed from this pot. The City also undertakes to publish for 90 days on its website a text of apology of three paragraphs intended for demonstrators who have suffered inappropriate actions by the Montreal police.
“As part of the out-of-court settlement of 16 class actions for which the City of Montreal is being sued in this context, it recognizes that certain actions taken by the police forces and the municipal administration towards participants in the demonstrations covered by these collective actions violated some of their fundamental rights, causing them damage. It is for this reason that the City of Montreal publicly offers its apologies to all these people ”, indicates the text.
This agreement must now receive the approval of the Superior Court before being officially applied.