On the 21st of September, after years of demands from the SPVM’s (Service de Police de la Ville de Montreal) union to institute punishments for what they label as harassment against police, the Montreal city council adopted a new bylaw banning insults against municipal employees, notably including police officers. This new legislation will institute fines starting at $100 for a first offence and increasing to upwards of $2,000 for subsequent offences.
The law has faced great opposition in City Hall, online, and beyond. “Allowing police officers to fine people for insulting yet non-threatening expression greatly exacerbates the power imbalance between law enforcement and the public,” said Anaïs Bussières McNicoll, Québec Spokesperson and Fundamental Freedoms Director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA). Critics have also raised issues with the vague wording of the legislation, with concerns that it may be disproportionately applied against racialized people, with whom the SPVM has a difficult history. The law is now facing a legal challenge by a group of Montreal lawyers who argue the legislation is unconstitutional and violates freedom of expression under section 2(b) of The Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In the same motion, the city and SPVM have committed to providing 3,500 officers with body-worn cameras, better known as body-cams. Body-cams have been in the Montreal police reform conversation for years. In 2019, the SPVM held a pilot project for the cameras, but it “did not unequivocally demonstrate that portable cameras promote the transparency of police interventions, strengthen trust between the police and the citizen and ensure the safety of police,” according to an SPVM report that recommended against continuing with the program. However, this January, the mayor’s office set aside $40 million for the cameras, which would catch the SPVM up to services in other major Canadian cities such as Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary.
The actual commitment to adopting the cameras came only in the aftermath of this June, when the SPVM announced that all 16 members of a patrol unit based out of Station 39 in Montreal-Nord were being investigated for allegations of misconduct and racial harassment.
According to Radio-Canada, officers allegedly systematically stopped Black and Arab residents and issued tickets on a purely racial basis, keeping pieces of dreadlocks cut from the heads of those involved in police actions as trophies. Montreal-Nord is one of the most racially diverse neighbourhoods in the city, with 57% of the population being racialized. These allegations have unsurprisingly caused uproar in the community and beyond, with many, including Montreal mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada, calling for an independent probe into the incident. The SPVM has thus far suspended only four officers and relocated the rest to other stations. Just this week, the service also announced that it had sent the case to Québec’s public prosecution authority, which will determine which, if any, criminal charges will be filed against the officers.
While the SPVM hopes that these efforts, along with the body-cam program, will help repair the relationship with the people of Montreal, it remains to be seen whether this will be enough to bring back trust in the service.
