Ethics panel hears from key witness in Agent 728 case
Police ethics committee looking into complaint of excessive force, racial bias
Even though she is no longer a police officer, Stéphanie Trudeau — known as Agent 728 — can still be intimidating.
That’s how Julian Menezes felt as a police ethics committee hearing into the actions of Trudeau and her former partner, Constantinos Samaras, got underway Wednesday.
During his testimony, Menezes asked ethics committee chairman Pierre Gagné to have Trudeau stop staring at him because he felt intimidated.
The committee is examining charges of racial bias, excessive force, and illegal arrest and detention.
The hearing was to be for Trudeau and Samaras, but the complaints against Samaras have been separated and will be heard at a later date.
The incident with Menezes dates back to the early morning of May 20, 2012, when Menezes and two friends witnessed Trudeau and her partner giving a cyclist a ticket at the corner of Mont-Royal Ave. E and de la Roche St. around 2:30 a.m.
The incident happened at the height of the student protests that spring, which thrust Trudeau into the spotlight when video of her liberally spreading pepper spray went viral.
Menezes, who is of South Asian origin, testified that although he told Trudeau he and his friends only wanted to witness the ticket being given to the cyclist, Trudeau told the group that it was none of their business and they should move along.
When they didn’t move away after the second warning, Menezes says Trudeau charged at him, threw him to the ground, handcuffed him with the help of Samaras and tossed him into the back of the patrol car.
In the process, Menezes says he suffered injuries to his ankle, and he says he later suffered facial injuries as he was thrown around in the back of the car as Trudeau drove around the area, speeding up and slamming on the brakes repeatedly so his face would hit the Plexiglas divider between the front and back seats.
While in the car, Menezes says he repeatedly asked the officers why he was being detained and what he was being charged with, and when he asked for their names and badge numbers, he said all the officers did was laugh.
However, Menezes admitted he refused to identify himself to police until they had told him what charges he was facing. When asked to produce ID, all he had on him was a credit card and bank card.
When Samaras read his name, he asked if the family name was of Portuguese origin. Menezes testified that Trudeau quickly interjected and said “No, he’s a f---ing Indian.”
Around 3:30 a.m., Menezes said he was dumped in a parking lot with no money for a taxi and a $146 ticket for continuing to do an act despite being ordered not to by a peace officer. Menezes contested the ticket, which was thrown out before the case made it to municipal court.
Under cross-examination, Trudeau’s lawyer, Giuseppe Battista, tried to poke holes in Menezes’s testimony and questioned the timing of his complaint against the officers.
While the incident took place in May, the ethics complaint was not filed until August, and Menezes admitted that he had found the video of Trudeau using pepper spray while doing some searches on the internet on how to resolve his case.
Battista wondered if it wasn’t Trudeau’s now infamous badge number that led to the complaint.
“My thought process was that an injustice had been committed to me and I needed to find restitution for that,” Menezes replied.
In January, the Human Rights Commission ruled in Menezes’s favour in a complaint about racial profiling against Trudeau and Samaras, and ordered them and the city to pay $40,000 in damages.