The City of Montreal assures that it will compensate racialized people who have suffered racial profiling from its police officers, following the judgment rendered a month ago, but it is appealing part of the decision, because she opposes the way of calculating compensation for a category of victims.
“It is an unprecedented and historic judgment that has been rendered. The fact that victims of profiling will be compensated is also historic,” underlined the person responsible for the fight against racism and systemic discrimination on the executive committee, Gracia Kasoki Katahwa, in an interview with La Presse.
“But we want to be able to compensate the victims individually, while for one of the subgroups, the judgment imposes collective recovery. This is why we are appealing. »
The decision to appeal the Superior Court’s judgment was made Wednesday morning behind closed doors by the executive committee.
Montreal was ordered to pay between $2,500 and $5,000 to racialized people arrested without justification by officers of the Montreal City Police Service (SPVM) between 2017 and 2019. According to data provided by the City as part of the trial , there were nearly 40,000 arrests of racialized people during this period.
It was a collective action by the Quebec Black League that led to this judgment.
170 million
At the start of the collective action, the Quebec Black League estimated the amount of the lawsuit at 170 million, and estimated that 10,000 to 30,000 victims could come forward to receive compensation.
The City of Montreal says it has not calculated how much it will have to pay to compensate the victims, who are mainly from black, Arab, Latino and indigenous communities.
“It’s not a question of money,” assures Gracia Kasoki Katahwa. We want to compensate the victims and we have already had discussions with the Negro League on this subject. »
Judge Dominique Poulin established four groups of victims in her judgment. It requires Montreal to pay $5,000 to each person arrested without justification who has suffered racial profiling following a call to 911 or the intervention of the Eclipse Squad, and $2,500 to people arrested whose personal data is missing. were not recorded by the police.
Those who have also been arrested and detained without reason will have to establish the moral and material damage they have suffered, in order to receive the appropriate sum.
Mathematical calculation
But for the group of racialized people who were arrested on the street by the SPVM, the judge imposed a mathematical calculation, based on the “overall arrest” of people of black, Arab, Latino and indigenous races.
The “over-arrest” should be calculated by comparing the proportion of racialized people among citizens arrested by the SPVM with the proportion of racialized people in the Montreal population. This number should then be multiplied by $5,000 to establish the amount to be paid by the City for this category of victims.
But if all the victims do not come forward, the rest of the prize pool will have to be paid to Quebec, into the Collective Action Fund, as well as to the lawyers who led the collective action of the Black League, deplores the City.
It is this provision that disturbs Montreal.
“We especially do not want this money to go into the pockets of lawyers and the government of Quebec, which does not itself recognize systemic racism,” protests Gracia Kasoki Katahwa.
She recalls that the mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante, recognized systemic racism and racial profiling, particularly when she testified as part of the collective action.
“It’s thanks to decades of fighting racism,” she said. When a member of your family, a father, a brother, is arrested by the police for no reason, it causes a lot of suffering and incomprehension, so it is important to compensate the victims. »
Following the judgment, the head of the SPVM, Fady Dagher, has still not announced how he intends to intervene to avoid racial profiling on the part of his agents, who continue to make arrests.