Public security minister believes police will heed warning from BEI
QUEBEC The public security minister says she has complete confidence in the head of Quebec’s police watchdog agency and believes Montreal police officers will conform to her warning about respecting the rules on investigations into police shootings.
“I saw extracts of this letter in the media,” Geneviève Guilbault told reporters Wednesday as she arrived for a meeting of the Quebec cabinet.
“What I saw is (Madeleine) Giauque did her work.
“She warned Montreal police that there are some practices that need to be respected and she provided a polite reminder to the SPVM.
“I am confident they will respect what they ’re supposed to be doing in order to have a great collaboration with the BEI, whose work is to investigate death and injuries of people.”
Guilbault was responding to a letter from Giauque, director of the Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes, to Montreal police Chief Martin Prud’homme.
Dated Sept. 4, Giauque complains some officers are not following proper procedures when one of their members is involved in a shooting. Montreal police officers should not be taking statements from witnesses and showing those statements to supervisors, she says.
That’s what happened following the fatal shooting in August of Nicholas Gibbs, a 23-year-old Black man in Notre-Dame-deGrâce who was alleged to have threatened police with a knife.
Lawyers representing the family of Gibbs released a copy of the letter Tuesday. Giauque also notes such a practice “undermines the credibility of the system.”
“I am asking you to ensure that the SPVM immediately stop interviewing witnesses whether they are police officers or civilians, where there is an independent investigation,” she writes.
After Prud’homme received the letter, he put an end to the practice, police said when questioned on the matter by the Montreal Gazette.
Guilbault, who was only sworn in as minister a few weeks ago, welcomed the intervention.
“I am taking note of the fact Mâitre Giauque did her work,” Guilbault said.
“She asked for police to respect the practices that are in place. I am 100 per cent confident in the work of Mâitre Giauque.”