Officers urge police union to stop denying profiling

The refusal of the head of the Montreal police union to acknowledge systemic racism within the force has drawn criticism from Black officers, including nine who recently wrote to him to share concerns over his stance on the issue.

In a letter sent last week to Montreal Police Brotherhood president Yves Francoeur, the officers expressed surprise at him denying there’s systemic racism in recent media appearances and said he doesn’t understand their reality.

“Recognizing a problem is the first step toward the solution,” the officers wrote.

But in a written response to the letter, Francoeur again refused to recognize the issue. The union shared the response with reporters on Sunday, but said Francoeur would not be making any further public comments on the matter.

“The issues you raise in your letter are of great importance and complexity,” Francoeur wrote to the officers, admitting to instances of racism and discrimination in the force, but stopping short of describing the problem as systemic.

“In the police context, many people understand the term systemic racism to mean that everyone is involved in some form of a deliberately racist system, which, in addition to being false, is outrageous for Montreal police officers,” Francoeur wrote.

“We have, therefore, abandoned semantics,” he added, “in order to avoid dividing ourselves over an expression.”

At a news conference Sunday, the Centre for Research-action on Race Relations, which has been in contact with the nine officers who wrote the letter, criticized Francoeur’s response and urged the union and police force to take concrete actions against systemic racism.

“Of course, not all SPVM officers are racist, that would be a silly statement to make,” said Alain Babineau, a former RCMP officer who advises the CRARR on issues of racial profiling and security. “But when you have a deficient system, this allows for the bad apples not only to flourish, but also to infect others.”

Babineau said he discussed the matter with the officers in question and, together, came up with measures the police force could implement to address the issue.

They include better screening of the force’s police cadets for implicit biases, adopting an “early warning system” to identify repeat offenders within the force, and a zero-tolerance policy with more robust corrective measures when it comes to discrimination.

Babineau, who has 30 years of police work to his name, also applauded the officers for speaking out.

“The biggest challenge Black officers face is to talk about the issue of race without people automatically feeling like they ’re being accused of being racist,” he said.

“But when we talk about systemic discrimination it doesn’t automatically mean people are bad,” he added. “Systemic (means) a way of doing things that comes over time through perceptions, stereotypes, practices, and policies. It becomes something you don’t even realize.”

In their letter to Francoeur, the officers said they couldn’t blame him for not understanding their reality because of the strong “culture of silence” that still persists within the force.

But the letter also points out the police department recognized the “systemic character of racism and discrimination” following a scathing report two weeks ago by Montreal’s public consultation bureau.

Montreal Police Chief Sylvain Caron had previously avoided acknowledging the police force has a systemic racism problem.

Quebec Premier François Legault has also refused to use the term.

Recent weeks have seen thousands attend protests in Montreal to call for reform following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

In his response, Francoeur called Floyd’s killing “horrific and racist,” but warned against comparing the situation in Montreal to the United States.