Racial profiling case over seatbelt ticket delayed again

Joel DeBellefeuille’s hearing to contest a seatbelt ticket he says is another case of racial profiling by Longueuil police was put off for the fifth time Friday.

The prosecution announced another date would have to be found after DeBellefeuille and his wife had been sitting in the Longueuil municipal courtroom for three hours.

DeBellefeuille received extensive media coverage for battling a $523 ticket he received in 2009 for not providing identification after being pulled over in his BMW. Longueuil’s municipal court initially ruled in favour of the police. DeBellefeuille appealed and Quebec Superior Court ordered a new trial, specifying the municipal court must take his defence of racial profiling into account.

Officers testified they stopped him because they thought it strange to see a black man driving a car registered to someone with a Québécois name. Three years after the incident, charges were dropped on the basis DeBellefeuille’s rights were violated under the Canadian and Quebec charters of rights. The officers were reprimanded by Quebec’s police ethics committee and suspended for five days without pay.

Saying he was fed up with the “B.S.” after being pulled over as many as 10 times, DeBellefeuille vowed to fight profiling, teaming up with the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR).

DeBellefeuille filed another complaint with the ethics committee after a police car trailed him for 11 blocks while he was driving his son to daycare in 2012. The case was dropped in 2016 because one of the police officers couldn’t be found.

DeBellefeuille’s latest battle stems from October 2015, when he pulled into the parking lot of a motel in St-Hubert as a police car was pulling out. He said officers looked at him, then reversed and approached him. They gave him a $126 ticket for not wearing a seatbelt. He said he was wearing one, and the ticket was a pretence for covering up racial profiling. He filed another complaint with the ethics committee.

Before this week, his latest court date had been scheduled and put off four times.

On Friday, after more than four other cases had been heard, prosecutor Daniel Gauthier first asked DeBellefeuille how long he thought arguing the case would take. DeBellefeuille said he had no idea. Gauthier said it would take at least two hours and another date had to be set because the morning court session was almost over. DeBellefeuille categorized the delay as “more B.S.”

DeBellefeuille has a court hearing Monday to determine a new date for his case.