The consensus is increasingly firm around the harmful practice of police arrests and the racial profiling they reveal, but the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) persists and signs: against and against the hard-hitting conclusion of a report recommending the cessation of these practices to the undemonstrated benefit, the new head of the SPVM preaches for the strategy of “small steps” and pleads for a little more time.
Time, however, there is no more. The SPVM has been engaged in a reflection on racial profiling for nearly six years. Two of its leaders — the last, Sylvain Caron, and the current, Fady Dagher — have shown an openness deemed sincere to reflect on ways of curbing a problem that they recognize, which is already a gain given the police resistance in this case. In 2020, a first step was taken with the implementation of a new questioning policy to be based on “observable facts” as opposed to arbitrary reasons, based on impressions, preconceived ideas or prejudices, breeding ground for discrimination.
What about three years later? The report unveiled last week offers an assessment, and its conclusions are hard to take for the police: despite the new cultural shift, police arrests are still more aimed at Aboriginal people (6 times more likely to be targeted than whites), Blacks (3.5 times more) and Arabs (2.6 times). Also, the policy should have had the effect of reducing the total number of arrests, but the researchers found the opposite. The racial disparity has not diminished, the contextual data provided by the police in a new registration system does not justify an over-representation of certain racialized minorities. Finally, disappointingly, the novelty introduced in 2020 had a negligible effect on police practices. The police force seems to doubt the merits of the turn.
The gap between the perception of the police (the researchers conducted interviews with 70 SPVM officers) and the desire for change in the practice of arrest is striking in the report. In the eyes of the majority of them, the arrest is necessary, because it serves to prevent crime, to provide assistance, to feed criminal intelligence and to validate suspicions. The majority also considers that the criticisms aimed at the arrest are the result of a lack of knowledge of their work. In addition, accusations of racism within their training are strongly rejected and, note the researchers, “this denial is absolutely crucial to grasp, because it directly contributes to the immobility in practices”.
Chief Fady Dagher says he wants to tackle this immobility, but without taking the path of force. The idea of a moratorium – although borrowed by other authorities – does not suit him, and he therefore rejected the first recommendation of the report at the same time as he welcomed its conclusions without discrediting the basis of discrimination which colors them. . “No doubt it takes more time [pour voir les résultats de la politique de 2020], but also to go faster, to act stronger”, said the head of the SPVM, conceding that he had to “accelerate”. This double intention hides a paradox: the leader would perhaps hope to go quickly, but he knows that his troops will stiffen if he forces the deal.
Culture changes are indeed the toughest. They require time, and the captain of the troops seems to be aware of this. But he does not have an eternity, because the external pressures add up, and the police cannot remain in complete opposition to the social consensus, on the pretext that the police have mastered their codes and that the population, ignorant, does not not grasp the subtleties. The fight against crime and the protection of the population cannot be unconscious pretexts for the abusive practice of discrimination.
In an extreme but striking case, we saw recently with the death of young Nahel, killed by a police officer in France, how an apparent abuse of police power in a yet banal context of arrest can lead to a tragedy. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination asked France last Friday to adopt “legislation that […] prohibits racial profiling” and “to attack […] structural and systemic causes of racial discrimination”, particularly in the police.
In the report on arrest practices commissioned by the SPVM, a minority of police officers interviewed, from racialized groups, think that there is a problem of racism within the police. It’s because they suffered the horrors of it themselves. The head of the SPVM can rely on this group to influence others and convince them that change is necessary. Even if Fady Dagher does not live in denial, it seems that his troops are comforting themselves there, which builds resistance and inertia. Instead of seeing only criminals in all these people they arrest, they should also consider people.