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Racial profiling is a systemic problem among Montreal police and the city is responsible for allowing it to happen, a Superior Court judge ruled in a decision made Tuesday on a class-action action lawsuit.
“The phenomenon of racial profiling that manifests from the Montreal police is systemic,” Justice Dominique Poulin stated bluntly in her lengthy decision. The case alleged the problem has existed for decades.
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“The city of Montreal is responsible for the racial profiling committed by its police officers in its function and is responsible to reimburse” some of the people and groups who are part of the class action that sought $17 million when the trial was heard last year.
The judge awarded $5,000 in damages to the lead plaintiff, Alexandre Lamontagne, a security guard who alleged Montreal police officers accosted and forcibly arrested him without cause when he was coming out of a bar in the Old Port.
The case was brought against the city by Lamontagne, who is Black, and the Black Coalition of Quebec. The Gazette has contacted the Black Coalition of Quebec seeking reaction from its president Max Stanley Bazin.
On Aug. 14, 2017, Lamontagne, 50, at the time a security guard with the McGill University Health Centre, was apprehended and handcuffed by Montreal police officers. He was apprehended after having a beer at a bar with his brother. He was crossing St. Jacques St. when the first police officer involved shouted: “Can we help you?” When Lamontagne said he didn’t understand the question the police officer said: “Yeah. You’re looking at us. Can we help you?”
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The interaction went downhill from there.
The judge also awarded $5,000 each to people who made up two groups in the lawsuit and $2,500 each to people who were part of a third group.
The people who were awarded $5,000 each are defined in the decision as: “All physically racialized people who, in Montreal between July 11, 2018 and Jan. 11, 2019, following a proactive intervention by a Montreal police officer, was questioned, without justification and was subjected to racial profiling in violation of their rights as a citizen and all other violations of their rights guaranteed through the Charter of Rights and Freedoms” in cases where evidence was recorded.
Another group of people awarded $5,000 each in damages included all “physically racialized people” who were questioned without justification, during the same timeframe, by members of the Eclipse squad or after a 911 call. The Eclipse squad’s mandate is to find people tied to organized crime, specifically, members of street gangs, by monitoring activity at Montreal bars. They often enter bars looking for people who might be in violation of probation orders or surveillance conditions.
Members of the group awarded $2,500 include “physically racialized people” whose rights were violated by police but in cases where evidence wasn’t recorded.
Each member of the fourth group will have to establish the moral and material damages they suffered, Poulin decided.
The judge heard testimony from several people in the civil trial last year, including Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante and police Chief Fady Dagher.
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