2 officers in Lasalle arrest cited for excessive force
Two Montreal police officers were cited by their disciplinary body last week for using excessive force while illegally arresting a high school teacher in a LaSalle parking lot in April 2010.
In a ruling issued last Thursday, judge Jean Provencher found the officers had no grounds for dragging Farid Charles out of his friend’s car, slamming him against the pavement and detaining him for loitering. But while the judge admonished officers Christopher Brault and Mathieu Boucher-Bacon for abuse of power, he maintained that neither was guilty of racial profiling.
“I’m glad the officers were found guilty, but there was never any question in my mind that this was racial profiling,” said Charles, 29, who is black. “They treated me like an animal. I just don’t think I would have been treated that way if I weren’t a visible minority.”
Charles was in the passenger seat of his friend’s car that night,
“I didn’t feel like a man that night … I’ve been harassed by police before but this was too much.”
FARID CHARLES
waiting as his friend went to pick up an order of takeout Caribbean food, when Brault approached the vehicle. He says Brault pulled open the passenger door and demanded to see Charles’s driver’s licence.
“I asked him if he was allowed to just open the door like that and he told me, ‘I can do whatever I want,’ ” Charles said. “I didn’t want to hand over my ID because I didn’t know what I had done.”
After a brief argument, Brault pulled Charles out of the car, ripping his jacket in the process, Charles said in testimony given to the police ethics commission. He also said officer Boucher-Bacon came to his partner’s aid and swung a punch at him.
“Next thing you know, my face is pushed up against the ground, I’ve got a knee on my back and my hands are cuffed together,” Charles said. “Then the owner of the restaurant came outside and yelled: ‘He’s a teacher, not a bad guy.’ And they just said they didn’t care.”
Charles said that for the next 40 minutes, he sat in the back of the squad car while Brault looked up LaSalle’s bylaws to see whether the man had violated any. In the end, he was ticketed for “wandering without being able to justify his presence.”
Provencher said the citation was illegal since Charles was seated in a car on private property and therefore not subject to LaSalle’s loitering bylaws. But Provencher dismissed the possibility of racial profiling, saying the officers’ illegal behaviour stemmed from the argument with Charles rather than the fact that he was black.
The Montreal police department would not comment on the judge’s decision, but police records indicate the area surrounding the Lafleur St. Caribbean restaurant was a suspected hub of street gang activity.
“There’s definitely some merit to the decision — it fundamentally limits abuses of police power — but this was clearly profiling,” Niemi said. “Why did they even question Charles to begin with? He’s outside of an ethnic restaurant, frequented by black costumers. They knew what they were doing.”
For Charles, the night was one he’d like to forget.
“I didn’t feel like a man that night. It made me break down and cry and I’m not the type to get emotional,” Charles said. “I’ve been harassed by police before, but this was too much. At some point you have to stand up for yourself. I have little brothers and I wouldn’t be able to look them in the eye if I didn’t fight this.”
Because the ethics commission does not have the power to impose sanctions on the officers, it is up to the Montreal police whether to further discipline the officers. A spokesperson for the Montreal police declined to comment on the matter.