A Sûreté du Québec (SQ) police officer was suspended for 12 days without pay for posing as a minor on Facebook in order to monitor a citizen he had arrested without valid reason a few months earlier.
“From the outset, not only the agent [Marc-Olivier] Blais should never have called [le citoyen]but what followed several months later, namely trapping him by using a fake Facebook account in order to obtain information about him, is serious misconduct,” said Judge Louise Rivard of the Administrative Tribunal of Police Ethics.
The events leading to this decision took place between June 2020 and May 2021.
As he was leaving a Jean Coutu pharmacy in downtown Saint-Hyacinthe on June 27, 2020, Vincent Lemieux was stopped by Officer Blais, who ordered him to give his name. When Mr. Lemieux asked him the specific reasons for his stop, the officer told him that he “had his description for convenience store theft.” SQ officers had received information a few weeks earlier about several people suspected of shoplifting.
The citizen told the police officer that he had nothing to reproach himself for and therefore refused to give his identity. As he tried to leave the scene, Mr. Lemieux was again stopped by Officer Blais, who threatened to arrest him if he refused to give his name. The citizen eventually gave in to the pressure, after which the police officer allowed him to leave the scene.
Three days later, Vincent Lemieux filed a police ethics complaint against Marc-Olivier Blais.
” Although [l’agent Blais] regrets his actions and acknowledges that he should have exercised better judgment in the circumstances, the Court must emphasize that questioning citizens and identifying them are powers and actions that police officers perform on a daily basis. It is regrettable that Officer Blais behaved in this way given his 12 years of experience,” we can read in the decision of administrative judge Rivard.
Facebook Friends
Eight months later, on February 26, 2021, Vincent Lemieux received a ticket for a Highway Safety Code violation from an SQ officer. After doing some research, he realized that the officer who gave him the ticket was a Facebook friend of Mr. Blais.
On April 28, 2021, Mr. Lemieux sent a private message to Officer Blais, mentioning the decision, but not stating its content. This message remained unanswered. But the following week, the citizen received a friend request on Facebook from a certain “Clara Bernard”, a minor girl. He quickly noticed that this Facebook profile was linked to Officer Blais’ personal email address and filed a new police ethics complaint against the latter on May 6, 2021.
During a subsequent meeting about this offence with one of his superiors, Marc-Olivier Blais quickly expressed remorse for his ethical breaches and said he was “ready to take responsibility for his actions”. “He explained that he did this in order to verify whether the complainant ‘was fixated on him and whether he was sharing information about him,’” the decision states.
At that time, Mr. Lemieux and Officer Blais had each filed criminal harassment complaints against each other.
The officer’s sincere remorse and lack of prior record were highlighted by the judge, who considered the risk of reoffending to be low. In total, the officer was given a 12-day suspension without pay, including 10 days for posing as a minor on Facebook in order to obtain information about Mr. Lemieux. Two days were added for illegally ordering the citizen to provide his identity and threatening to arrest him without valid reason.