$25,000 award but no apology from police
Racial slurs, rape threats, physical harm
After six years of battling the city of Montreal, Julian Menezes has been awarded $25,000 for an incident in which he says police roughed him up, called him a “f---ing Indian” and threatened him with rape.
And yet, despite the financial settlement and the Quebec Human Rights Commission ruling against the Montreal police, neither the department nor the city have offered Menezes an apology.
The city and Menezes reached a settlement last June, which included the $25,000 payment but no admission of liability. Critics say that failure, by police, to admit wrongdoing undermines their credibility.
“This strikes to the heart of the legitimacy of policing itself,” said Alain Babineau, a retired RCMP officer who spoke alongside Menezes as he announced the details of the June settlement at a press conference Tuesday. “In some of these cases, money settlements to me look like a licence to misbehave. You just pay a fee to misbehave.”
One advocate says an apology from Mayor Valérie Plante or the chief of police would go a long way toward changing police culture.
“There’s a lack of civility and humanity at the top and that has to change,” said Fo Niemi, director for the Centre on Research in Race Relations. “We want them to apologize, to at least acknowledge that something isn’t right.”
The incident with Menezes began in May 2012, when he and two friends witnessed officer Stéfanie Trudeau giving a cyclist a ticket. When the group approached Trudeau, Menezes says she handcuffed him, threw him in the back of her patrol car and called him a “f---ing Indian.” Menezes is of South Asian descent.
During a roundabout ride to the police station, Menezes says Trudeau accelerated the car in bursts before slamming on the brakes so his face would hit the Plexiglas that divides the back and front seats. He claims Trudeau also repeatedly told him that if he challenged his arrest in court, he’d be thrown in jail where he would be “f---ed in the ass.”
In the end, Trudeau and her partner allegedly dropped Menezes in the remote north end of Montreal at 3:30 a.m. knowing he had no money for a cab home. He was slapped with a $146 fine for “continuing to do an act” which the ticket didn’t specify.
The police ethics commission found last year that Trudeau abused her authority, was neglectful of Menezes’s safety and drove her squad car recklessly.
None of the commission’s sanctions applied to Trudeau because she retired in 2015. Constantinos Samaras, her partner at the time, was suspended from the force for two days for allowing Trudeau’s actions to go unchecked.
The city’s lawyers appealed a 2017 decision by the Human Rights Commission that faulted police for their treatment of Menezes and awarded him $40,000 in damages. It also called on the department to update its policy on racial on social profiling.
Upon appeal, the case was brought before the Human Rights Tribunal, which ruled in Menezes favour. But ultimately, the department hasn’t committed to reform or apologized for Trudeau’s actions.
Menezes said Tuesday he has mixed feelings about the settlement.
“Part of the relief is just that it’s done after six years,” said Menezes, a lecturer at McGill University. “I can start to process what happened now. I had to push it aside so that I could pursue this process without it destroying me.
“I feel happy to have done my duty as a citizen ... this is the only way we’re going to change things in this city. ... But I’m disappointed that the systemic measures we suggested weren’t implemented.”
One of the factors that led Menezes to accept a settlement was a commitment, by Montreal’s Executive Committee, to mandate a study on racial profiling within the city’s police department.
A motion adopted last March requires the department to provide better racial-profiling training and work closer with community groups to track complaints.
In 2016, Trudeau was convicted of assault for her actions during a separate arrest. She received a one-year suspended sentence.
For Babineau, who worked in law enforcement for 28 years, the take-away from Menezes’s case isn’t the officers’ actions so much as the lack of a response from police brass.
“Misbehaviour will happen in all professions, not just with police,” he said. “It’s how you deal with it that’s important . ... There needs to be serious reform and we’re just not seeing a commitment to that right now.”
Menezes insisted he doesn’t believe most police officers would have treated him the way Trudeau did in 2012. But he also wants the department to realize how damaging that behaviour can be.