A pioneer in the fight against racism and discrimination within the Montreal Police Department (SPVM), Commander Patrice Vilceus denounces the inaction of his organization’s senior leaders in this area in a letter announcing his retirement. In the document, which The Duty obtained a copy, the senior officer describes certain managers as “nuisances” to the organization and believes that they constitute an obstacle to the good intentions of the director, Fady Dagher.
After 30 years of service with the SPVM, Commander Patrice Vilceus announced his retirement this week in an internal letter addressed to his colleagues.
In interview with The Dutyjust like in his letter, the former commander emphasizes twice rather than once his respect for the work of the current director, Fady Dagher, in order to fight against racism and discrimination within the police force. “But his management does not think like him. He does everything he can to really change the culture,” emphasizes Patrice Vilceus in an interview. “He is all alone at the top. He can have the best intentions, but if his management does not adhere, they can easily contest it,” he specifies.
In his farewell letter, Commander Vilceus calls out the “managers of the stagnation who trivialize critical thinking”, who “are not numerous”, but who “occupy strategic positions”.
“These people who are in power, they are an incredible nuisance, they prevent the organization from flourishing,” Mr. Vilceus laments on the phone. “With their narrow vision and non-embodied leadership, their hierarchical authority is often the only lever to make subordinates obey,” he wrote in the letter sent to all the organization’s executives.
In his letter, Commander Vilceus points out that racism and racial profiling are still very present problems within the SPVM. “The scientific research commissioned by the SPVM is a flagrant example of this cancer that is eating away at the organization, and the judgment of the Superior Court presided over by the Honourable Judge Dominique Poulin is the apotheosis of this,” he emphasizes.
At the beginning of September, Superior Court Judge Dominique Poulin concluded, following a class action brought by the Ligue des Noirs du Québec and Alexandre Lamontagne, a Montrealer who was the victim of profiling, that the officers of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), like the City of Montreal, were at fault for committing racial profiling.
Brotherhood at the heart of the problem
“The culture doesn’t just need to change at the SPVM level, it also needs to change at the Fraternity level,” acknowledges Commander Vilceus.
The latter recalls that following a previous letter he had sent to the management of the SPVM in the context of the death of George Floyd in the United States, the president of the Brotherhood of Police Women and Police Officers of Montreal, Yves Francoeur, had not wished to acknowledge the existence of racism or racial profiling on the part of the SPVM police officers.
“That’s the head of the union who says that. Ten union members wrote him a letter to tell him that he didn’t have the right reading. His response was to go to Paul Arcand’s microphone to say that he was defending the police officers who were being smeared in public. But what is he doing to defend the police officers internally who are subject to racism? What is he doing for the police officers who are subject to discrimination, not always those who are subject to discrimination and injustice. We don’t hear him on that,” laments Patrice Vilceus.
Involvement and suspension
During his 30 years with the SPVM, Patrice Vilceus volunteered to promote the recruitment of minority police officers. He also introduced the celebration of Black History Month within the SPVM in 2004 and participated in organizing the tribute to Édouard Anglade, the first black police officer in the City of Montreal, in 2006.
Commander of the Éclipse (crime-fighting) squad for two years, he was suspended by former SPVM director Philippe Pichet in May 2017 after confidential documents were stolen from his company car in December 2015. A few weeks before the former commander’s suspension, the government announced the creation of a joint investigation team, overseen by the Sûreté du Québec, to investigate all sorts of allegations concerning the SPVM’s internal affairs. The members of the joint team investigated these allegations and submitted the file to a prosecutor from the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP), who decided not to lay charges against Commander Vilceus.