Video of cop causes row
Fellow officer calls a threat to tie up homeless man ‘stupid and ugly’
“One of the problems with homelessness is we tend to lump everyone
into one category.”
MCGILL UNIVERSITY SOCIAL WORK PROFESSOR DAVID ROTHWELL
The police officer who threatened to tie an itinerant man to a pole in the frigid cold met with his superiors for one hour Friday morning.
A police spokesperson confirmed the cop had a meeting with his supervising officers, who will decide what disciplinary sanctions to impose.
In video footage of the incident that surfaced online Thursday, the officer is heard telling an itinerant man, “I’ve told you that if I receive another 911 call about you, I will tie you to a pole for an hour.”
The man was wearing only shorts and a T-shirt, and had reportedly been aggressive with police and bystanders. Police say he was the subject of four 911 calls that day before the officer uttered the threat and repeated it.
“I swear — look into my eyes — I swear,” the officer said, pointing his finger at the man, “I’ll tie you to a pole for an hour.”
Though the officer had previously offered to drive the itinerant man to a homeless shelter, he refused and simply walked away from police after the verbal altercation.
Temperatures dipped as low as minus 27C on Thursday.
Montreal police Commander Ian Lafrenière said officers managed to find the man and take him to a hospital overnight. Lafrenière told The Gazette that the policeman’s commanding officer was “not happy at all” with the situation.
Meanwhile, Mayor Denis Coderre added his voice to criticisms of the officer Friday. “Regardless of the situation, you don’t talk that way, you don’t act that way,” he told reporters, adding “I’ll let (police) do their job” when it comes to discipline.
The video showing the threat went viral just as the city’s police department is trying to reach out to the homeless during the intense cold period that has descended upon Montreal. Since Monday, two officers have been tasked with patrolling alleys, under bridges and other outdoor squats to make sure no homeless people freeze to death during the night.
Police are also being more lenient with people sleeping in métro stations, and are maintaining close ties to the city’s network of homeless shelters.
On Thursday, Old Brewery Mission manager Jamie Clipston told The Gazette that demand for the shelter’s services are higher now than they’ve been in the 19 years he’s worked there. He said the homeless population in Montreal appears to be growing and many of the people he sees every day are getting older and more vulnerable to the harsh realities of life on the street.
“One of the problems with homelessness is we tend to lump everyone into one category,” said McGill University social work professor David Rothwell. “There people who are episodically homeless, people in a transitional phase and then you have a minority of them that are facing chronic problems. That minority, maybe about 20 per cent of the population, accounts for a majority of the services that go toward the homeless. They can be a difficult population to serve and it helps to have the right training.”
Rothwell says that the cancellation of programs like Chez Soi — a federally funded program that provided housing for the homeless coupled with intense follow-ups from social workers — isn’t helping the city’s homelessness crisis. Quebec opted out of the program in 2013 in part because provincial agencies feared their funding would be siphoned into Chez Soi.
“The program was showing some great, concrete results,” Rothwell said. “Now Quebec is going in a different direction.”
One police officer who deals with the homeless every day said the threat video reflects poorly on the entire police force.
“We’re working hard out here. The trust we try to build with the homeless is fragile,” said the officer, who spoke on condition of remaining anonymous for fear of alienating his peers. “He said something stupid and ugly and it doesn’t represent how we all feel about homeless people. We care.”
For his part, the mayor said the incident is just another indication of how the city needs to develop a comprehensive homelessness strategy that yields results before the end of 2014. In 2010, mayor Gérald Tremblay famously launched his own anti-poverty campaign, but without federal and provincial funds it struggled to gain traction.