STM is giving security staff police-like powers
Special-constable status means officers will have to answer to ethics commission
Looking back, it actually could have gone much worse for Juliano Gray.
After security guards at the Villa-maria métro station pinned him against the ground and began to “beat him to a pulp” last year, one policing expert says the ensuing struggle could have ended with the young man thrown onto the tracks.
“He could have died right there on the platform and we would have had our own riots,” says Alain Babineau, a former RCMP officer who worked with Gray to demand the city investigate his attack. “A young man, killed because he didn’t pay his fare, because he was black, he had mental health issues and security saw him as a threat. These security officers were absolved of any wrongdoing the next day.”
So why does Babineau agree with a proposal by Montreal’s transit authority to give its security guards police-like powers?
The Société de Transport de Montréal is moving forward with a plan to give its security staff special constable powers — giving them the authority to make arrests, transport prisoners to police stations and possibly have access to criminal databases to check for outstanding warrants.
But Babineau says the key here is that, under the Police Act, these special constables would also have to answer to the police ethics commission.
“I guarantee you that the day they get special-constable status, complaints to the commission will be coming fast and furious,” said Babineau, who works with the Centre for Research Action on Race Relations (CRARR). “Because from what I hear in the community, they seem to target young black men with impunity.”
Though STM president Philippe Schnobb has been pushing for the special-constable status since last year, the issue has resurfaced in light of Sunday’s protest against police brutality in Montreal. That march, which was one of hundreds of protests related to the police killing of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis, has forced the city, the province and the country to grapple with the question of systemic racism.
In Montreal, officers are nearly five times more likely to stop and question a black, Indigenous or Arab person than someone who is white. That’s according to a four-year review of police data presented at Montreal’s public security commission last year.
Three black men who spoke to the Montreal Gazette say they were regularly targeted by STM security; being handcuffed, pressed against a wall and forced to their knees for minor infractions like loitering or not having their ticket on hand.
Denburk Reid, who works with black youth, says it’s “scary” to think of STM security with more power.
“For a young black man to be stopped and interrogated is so common that we have to train them on how to handle it,” said Reid, who created the Montreal Community Care Foundation. “We tell them to be polite, say ‘yes sir, no sir’ even if they’re getting roughed up.
“It’s humiliating, but we teach them to take it on the chin so that they can walk away from the situation in one piece.”
Two years ago, Balarama Holness petitioned the city of Montreal to hold a public consultation on systemic racism. The question of métro security was a recurring one.
“You have kids living in neighbourhoods with few public services, without parks or arenas, with two parents working so they hang out at the métro station,” Holness said. “And they get ticketed for minor infractions, they get picked on, they get humiliated. This isn’t happening in white neighbourhoods.
“It frightens me to think that the solution would be giving the STM security more power.”
In a statement emailed to the Montreal Gazette, an STM spokesperson wrote that special-constable status means security guards will be subject to investigation by the Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes.
Meanwhile, the Coalition Avenir Québec government is set to publish a massive document on police reform — including the issue of racial profiling — before the end of the year.
Babineau says he wished last year’s incident with Gray would have been investigated by the city instead of it being “swept under the rug.”
The encounter left Gray injured and struggling with post-traumatic-stress disorder.
“In 30 years of policing, I can tell you what I saw, the rush to violence, is way outside protocol,” said Babineau. “Officers are trained to evaluate whether the person in question is a threat or whether they’re in a mental state to understand what you’re telling them.
“In Juliano Gray’s case, it was obvious he was struggling with his mental health, but they beat him anyway. It’s clear there was no training and then there was no accountability.
“I’d much rather have the security guards under the ethics commission than Philippe Schnobb.”