Police department opens probe after driver pepper-sprayed

Montreal police opened an internal investigation Monday after a widely shared video showed an officer pepper-spraying a black driver liberally in the face over alleged excessive honking.

Several bystanders, including one who was filming the man’s arrest, were also sprayed during the same incident by another officer early Sunday morning with downtown streets heavily congested because of F1-related festivities.

The investigation officers.

A short video of the incident was shared on Facebook and garnered a few hundred thousand views before being taken down.

Ian Lafreniere, the head of communications for the Montreal police, said an internal affairs probe will examine what happened.

“There’s a lack of information, so we’re not taking any chances,” Lafreniere said in an interview.

On the video, the unidentified driver can be heard claiming racism and questioning why he’s being arrested for honking his is into both horn. “For honking?,” he shouts in French as he is handcuffed and others in the video note he isn’t the only driver leaning on his horn.

Mayor Valerie Plante said she found the images worrisome.

“I spoke to the director of the police department this morning,” Plante tweeted Monday. “An investigation of the events has been triggered.”

Lafreniere said the video itself is only part of the investigation and that a telephone number has been provided for witnesses or bystanders to call to speak with police.

Police said officers told the driver several times to not honk his horn so crowds wouldn’t be revved up.

They say he subsequently refused to provide his licence when asked to do so.

The man’s car can also be seen in the video lurching forward, allegedly striking a police officer’s bicycle in its path before the arrest. Lafreniere said the situation quickly became quite tense and the officers involved in the arrest asked for “urgent backup” on two occasions.

A woman who supervised a nurse who preyed on elderly patients in her care says she disciplined Elizabeth Wettlaufer over poor job performance several times but there was no belief people were seriously being harmed at the long-term care home where they worked.

Helen Crombez, the former director of nursing at the Caressant Care home in Woodstock, Ont., is testifying today at the public inquiry examining Wettlaufer’s actions.

Wettlaufer pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of eight elderly patients between 2007 and 2014, including seven at Caressant Care.

Her crimes had gone undetected until she confessed them to mental health workers and police in 2016.

Lawyers for the victims’ families presented handwritten notes from several disciplinary meetings Crombez had with Wettlaufer for issues such as failing to document a new patient admission or creating more work for colleagues by neglecting some of her duties.

Notes from August 2012 indicate Caressant supervisors had “some concern” for patient safety as a result of Wettlaufer’s performance but that there was no belief she had caused “sustained harm.”

Wettlaufer, who killed patients by injecting them with overdoses of insulin, was ultimately fired from Caressant Care in 2014 for making multiple errors when giving medication to patients.