For the second time in as many months, a damning internal report has outlined the breakdown of policing in Montreal’s most troubled neighbourhood, going so far as to accuse officers of “racism.”
The Montreal Police Service had intended to keep the newest report secret and the city is facing accusations that it was trying to suppress the study.
But the coroner heading up the ongoing inquest into the death of 18-year-old Fredy Villanueva is weighing whether to allow it into evidence, something the police union and city oppose.
Written by a psychologist with expertise in conflict and crisis management, it’s blunt in its assessment of policing in Montreal North, site of the 2008 riots sparked by the death of an unarmed Villanueva at the hands of a young officer.
“The youth say that the police officers say things they wouldn’t dare say in any other sector of the city,” writes the psychologist, Martin Courcy, who met with about 60 young people from the area and observed police operations there following the riots.
Some examples cited in the report: To a youth from North Africa, an officer allegedly said, “Why don’t you blow yourself up?” To another, “If you’re not happy, why not go back to your country?”
And even this: “We prefer to be colonizers than slaves.”
This isn’t racial profiling, Courcy explains, “but racism pure and simple.”
The Courcy report comes on the heels of another damning internal report, by researcher Mathieu Charest, outlining racial profiling by Montreal police, namely an “alarming” increase in identity checks of visible minorities. The police disavowed that report, calling the methodology biased.
The latest data, leaked to La Presse and Le Devoir, must lead the city to act, said Fo Niemi, executive director of Montreal’s Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations.
“These reports confirm what people have come to experience on the ground in the last 10 years,” Niemi said. “And the city, still to this day, is trying to use all sorts of tactics and procedures to deny the problem exists.”
He said the city continues to stall at human rights commission reviews and battle to keep these reports confidential.
“These are Nixon-like tactics to hide the Watergate tapes,” he ventured.
One civil liberties group, La Ligue des droits et des libertés, said in a statement it was “outraged” to learn the police has had in hand for two years a report outlining racist attitudes in the force. They kept it secret, even as city brass denied a systemic problem at human and youth rights commission hearings into racial profiling last spring.
“Enough hypocrisy and inaction,” said the league’s president, Dominique Peschard, calling on the mayor to act.
Courcy, for his part, said in an interview that he wasn’t sure why the department didn’t want the report made public. He was to give officers training following the report’s publication, but neither did that come to pass, he said.
Following Villanueva’s death, Courcy was given the mandate to determine how police interventions might avoid the same result, he explained.
The psychologist’s report concludes that the force’s anti-gang squads, prioritized under the previous chief, ended up alienating minority youth in general, who felt provoked by the police.
“They are often scared of being arrested without reason,” the report states. “This fear is shared by the majority.”
In this context, “it’s not surprising” that a riot broke out.
Anger over Villanueva’s death led to the August, 2008 riot, during which cars were burned and dozens of stores looted.
A spokesperson for the Montreal police said the force wouldn’t comment on the report since it’s under debate at the inquest.
However, Sgt. Ian Lafrenière said the public should know the service has been training officers on racial profiling. “We’ve always been clear,” he offered, “it’s not a practice the Montreal Police Service condones.”
Courcy took pains to note that the department isn’t entirely racist. The racism was seen among a few officers — “exceptions” — he told the Star.
Courcy, who has worked with police forces in the past, added that the new police chief, Marc Parent, who was sworn in earlier this month, wants to improve relations with the youth of Montreal North.
Indeed, during his swearing in ceremony, Parent said he wants the police to be closer to cultural communities, more “inclusive.”
Mayor Gérald Tremblay urged him to deal with discriminatory practices, including racial profiling.
Niemi is also optimistic about Parent. “I think the chief recognizes the problems and the need to solve them,” Niemi said.
“But there is more than the chief. What is city council doing to ask for answers about this?”
The Star
