‘Findings do not represent city we want,’ Plante says
Mayor demands SPVM take action on discrimination after ‘shocking’ report
Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante says the findings of an independent report on racial profiling by the Montreal police department are “shocking” and “worrisome,” and she is demanding the SPVM take immediate action to correct systemic discrimination in its operations.
“These findings do not represent the city we want,” Mayor Plante said at a news conference a few hours after the report was released Monday. She said Montrealers want “a city where every citizen feels safe, a city where citizens must be treated fairly. In light of this report, we see that there is clearly a fundamental problem that leads to systemic discrimination.”
Plante said she is satisfied the SPVM now recognizes there are systemic biases within its police force and accepts the researchers’ recommendations. She will demand the SPVM “rigorously” follow the five recommendations of the researchers, particularly the one requiring an annual report that tracks progress on racial profiling by the department.
The mayor said she is glad the SPVM will be the first police department in Quebec to create an interception and questioning policy aimed at ending bias, but she said the department must go further, by hiring more members of minority communities.
“Our police force must reflect the citizens it represents, serves and protects,” she said. “The report highlights this: it is a problem at the SPVM and it has been discussed for way too long, while diversity rates among our police officers have stagnated for the past 10 years.”
Plante said elected officials and police forces must stop pretending racial profiling is not happening, and take the need to eradicate it more seriously.
“From now on, there will be no more evasion: we may not like what we are seeing and hearing but facing reality is the first necessary step,” Plante said.
Looking at SPVM statistics over a four-year period, from 2014 to 2017, the researchers found that black people, Indigenous people and those who appeared Arabic were significantly more likely to be stopped and questioned by police than were white people. For example, a black person between 25 and 34 years of age was five times more likely to be stopped than a white person in that age group, and Arabic youth aged 15 to 24 were four times more likely than white youth to be stopped by police.
Plante seemed outraged in particular over the researchers’ findings about Indigenous women. The report showed an Indigenous woman in Montreal is 11 times more likely to be intercepted by police than a white woman.
“We can only imagine the situation for these women, who are already marginalized, to then be further (victimized) in this way,” she said.
Meanwhile, Montreal city councillor Abdelhaq Sari expressed outrage that he was refused entry by Montreal police to the press conference where the report on racial profiling was unveiled.
“It is ironic that I would be refused entry to a conference on the interception of racialized people when I myself am an elected official of Maghrebin origin,” Sari said.
Asked at her press conference about the incident, Mayor Plante says it was unacceptable and said she would look into it.
Others, including opposition leader Lionel Perez and Fo Niemi, director of the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations, said that in light of the report, the Plante administration should reconsider its decision against obliging police officers to wear portable video cameras.
Perez noted the report released Monday was actually commissioned by the previous administration, and charged that Plante’s administration has done little so far on the issue.
Niemi said Montreal police must take a hard look at discriminatory practices and procedures, including using excuses such as uncivil behaviour, like spitting in the street or talking loudly, to arrest people. He said it is key that the police department accept that their current policies and procedures are resulting in discrimination.
“We have to accept the fact that the data don’t lie,” Niemi said.
Kenrick McRae, who was stopped and questioned by SPVM officers in August for the fourth time on what he considers baseless grounds, is not holding his breath that things will change quickly. McRae said he is constantly stopped and followed by police and he believes it is simply because he is a black man who drives an expensive car. He worries that one of these times, things could escalate.
“I’m fearful for my life,” said McRae, who has made a complaint to the Police Ethics Committee. “They do what they do and the system is normalizing it.”