$45,000 damages for racial, social profiling

Commission recommends city, officers pay

Quebec’s Human Rights Commission has recommended the City of Montreal and two of its police officers pay $ 45,000 in damages to Amal Asmar, who complained she was illegally arrested and detained by the officers in 2010 while sitting on a bench outside the Alexis Nihon Plaza.

In its decision, made public Tuesday, the commission found there is enough evidence to show the officers engaged in “discriminatory profiling based on ethnic or national origin, but also based on social condition.”

The Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations ( CRARR), which helped Asmar with the case, said it’s the first case in which the Commission has found “someone was at the same time the victim of racial and social profiling.”

A student at the time, Asmar was studying at Concordia’s library until the early hours of the morning and was walking to a friend’s house when she sat on a bench outside a shopping plaza at 2:30 a.m. to rest and retrieve gloves from her bag.

Asmar said two police officers pulled up beside her, and one of the them asked: “Is there a problem? What are you doing in this area?”

When Asmar refused to identify herself, she said the officers grabbed her, placed her on the hood of the car and handcuffed her. She was searched and placed in the police car. The officers, constables Michael McIntyre and Sébastien Champoux, wrote her two tickets — a $620 fine for misuse of municipal property for putting her bag on the bench, and a $ 420 fine for making too much noise. Several months after the she received the tickets, the City of Montreal wrote to Asmar saying she did not have to pay them. Asmar also said that, after releasing her, the officers threw her belongings against a wall.

Asmar claimed she was the subject of racial profiling because she is of Palestinian origin and was wearing a keffieh ( a Palestinian scarf ) at the time.

The Quebec Human Rights Commission said the city (which oversees the police department), McIntyre and Champoux should pay Asmar $30,000 in moral damages. It said the city should pay her an additional $ 10,000 and McIntyre and Champoux should each pay an additional $2,500 each in punitive damages.

The commission said the city should also take measures to prevent further racial and social profiling.

The city and the officers had until Aug. 25 to pay the fines, failing which the Commission said it would ask Quebec’s Human Rights Tribunal to intervene. CRARR said neither the city nor the officers have paid the fines.

The Human Rights Tribunal is a specialized tribunal of Court of Quebec judges and assessors that has jurisdiction to hear and rule on complaints concerning discrimination prohibited under the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.