It took several years, and probably several headaches, before the management of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) found a solution to the problem. thin blue line, this symbol that “divides” (the words are from Mayor Valérie Plante) on the uniforms of certain Montreal police officers. The police chief, Fady Dagher, announced at the end of May the creation of a new badge, “Fallen but never forgotten”, which unambiguously honors the police officers who died in service, while highlighting at a distance the other symbolic scopes of the thin blue line. At least, that’s the intention.
The symbol has been around for a long time, but it spread like wildfire in the 2010s, amid the height of the Black Lives Matter movement. It has become, for many, not only a symbol of the memory of police officers who died on duty, but a symbol of resistance and police solidarity in the face of the phenomena of profiling and racial violence.
The thin blue line also represents a very specific aspect of police culture. A common expression both in the United States and in Canada to describe it is blue wall of silence, or the blue wall of silence. The idea that there is a “code”, between police officers, where we do not denounce each other. We stick together, whatever the cost, regardless of the behavior of colleagues — and regardless of the badge (worn or not) on the uniforms.
The phrase is used in the title of the CBC investigation published in April, which revealed that a third of police officers suspended in Ontario had been disciplined following allegations of domestic or sexual violence. The report recounts several cases where accused police officers are suspended with pay, sometimes for years, at astronomical costs to the public. And where denounced agents return to their posts without problem, as long as they escape prison.
On Monday, an investigation by Duty revealed that in Quebec, one in two police officers accused of criminal offenses in the last five years have been charged for offenses committed in the context of domestic or sexual violence. A proportion twice as high as in the general population.
The parallels between the two investigations are of course glaring. Both in Ontario and Quebec, voices of experts and victims try to tell us that the statistics extracted from the police by the work of journalists represent the tip of the iceberg. We already know very well how difficult it is to file a complaint with the police for sexual or domestic violence. When you have to report another police officer to the police, the obstacles, and the fear, are even more imposing to overcome.
We are afraid, in particular, that the police will defend themselves, at the expense of their victim. Is this fear exaggerated?
Let us recall how far the “code” of solidarity can lead in other contexts. Last summer, in France, the police officer who shot and killed the teenager Nahel was the subject of a crowdfunding campaign raising more than 1 million euros. In Ottawa, in 2017, when police officer Daniel Montsion was accused of the homicide of Abdirahman Abdi, more than 1,200 black and blue bracelets bearing his service number were purchased and distributed to police officers in the capital. Montsion was acquitted in 2020, news greeted with pain by the victim’s family.
These are perhaps the most obvious examples of what police solidarity is capable of when there is an outright death. We are entitled to ask questions about the way in which this solidarity operates when there is sexual or domestic violence. And to wonder, with The duty, which happens when the victim is herself a police officer, and she breaks the “blue wall”.
The investigation of Duty reveals that 54 Quebec police officers have been formally accused of sexual assault, sexual harassment, harassing communications and voyeurism in the last five years. It’s already huge. You will allow me to also wonder how many Quebec police officers born are not accused or even denounced for the same crimes. Because the victims are afraid of the blue wall or line, or because the matter is “resolved internally”.
The question is of course difficult. It may seem unfair. We should recall the years of public pressure it took to create the Bureau of Independent Investigations (BEI) in Quebec, which intervenes when there is death or serious injury at the hands of police officers on duty. In the old system dominated by internal investigations, there were almost never charges brought, let alone convictions. Under the new system, members of the public who are chosen to give “independence” to the BEI often have so many ties to police forces that critics continue to speak of a system that makes true accountability difficult.
So what about crimes committed by police officers when they are not on duty? This is what we immediately need more answers about. And why this over-representation of people accused of sexual violence within the police? The reasons are surely multiple. Let us at least say that sexual and domestic violence is always a matter of power and control.
We are here faced with a profession which allows you, after three years of CEGEP and an internship at Nicolet, to become a figure of authority within society, to carry a weapon daily, to have privileged access to information and power that circulate in the criminal justice system, to be supported almost unconditionally by your colleagues, and which therefore places you, not above, but at least in a “special status” relative to the law. Being a police officer is also a job that regularly places you in contexts where you can seek to be obeyed practically at your fingertips.
We can at least pose the hypothesis that it attracts what it attracts, and that it gives what it gives.