Montreal must pay victims of 'systemic' racial profiling by police. How much? That's unclear
CBC
Racial profiling is a "systemic" issue within Montreal's police force and the City of Montreal should be held accountable for it, according to a ruling from a Quebec Superior Court judge released on Tuesday.
The ruling pertains to a $171-million class-action lawsuit filed by the Black Coalition of Quebec and Alexandre Lamontagne, a Black man who had a late-night altercation with Montreal police after leaving a bar in 2017.
The ruling is complex and doesn't clearly spell out how much money the city will have to dole out.
What's clear is that it amounts to a partial financial victory for the plaintiffs.
Regardless of the amount of money, their lawyer says the ruling is significant.
"The judge arrived at the conclusion that, yes, there is discrimination, there is a racial profiling in the police of Montreal," lawyer Mike Diomande said. "This is, for us, the main thing, the most important thing."
Here's a breakdown of the 99-page decision.
The total of $171 million sought by the lawsuit amounts to about $5,000 per person who said they were racially profiled by officers from the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) while being stopped, arrested or detained between August 2017 and January 2019.
It includes both people who suffered physical injuries during the process and those who did not.
In her ruling, Justice Dominique Poulin only partially granted this request. First, she narrowed the time frame for eligible cases. She also outlined more specific categories of people and what level of compensation they were eligible for:
The judge also outlined the following compensation guidelines:
The judge did not set an amount of compensation for people who were unjustifiably arrested or detained by Montreal police, saying they would each have to prove the merit of their cases on an individual basis.
She encourages both parties to agree on how the money for the class action can be distributed, and how to go about the process of gathering individual claims.
In her ruling, Poulin wrote "the SPVM institution creates discriminatory effects on racialized people."
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