Montreal police investigating after officer caught on camera shoving man in Chinatown
CBC
Montreal police have launched an internal investigation after a video began circulating on social media showing an officer violently shoving a man to the ground in a Chinatown alleyway.
A spokesperson for the police said the service's Direction de l'intégrité et des normes professionnelles will be overseeing the investigation.
CBC News spoke with the person who caught the incident on video Thursday, filming it at around lunchtime in the alley between St-Urbain and Clark streets.
The police were approaching people in the alley and appeared to be searching them, said the witness, whom CBC has agreed to not identify.
Most of the people being searched were compliant, but it was when the officers approached a man in a makeshift shelter constructed of a couple of pallets that things got heated, the witness said.
One officer appeared to pull a supporting plank from the shelter in a way that caused a portion of the structure to fall on the man, the witness said. The move appeared to be intentional, and the man was then touching his head and looking at his hand as if checking for blood, the witness said.
The man became upset and was yelling, but the police were pushing him repeatedly and attempting to chase him away, the witness said.
At one point, the witness captured the man being pushed down while he was walking away. He slammed into a concrete barrier. In the video, it is impossible to hear what is being said between the officers and man.
The man was in his socks and "trying to get his shoes," the witness said, which were at the now destroyed pallet shelter.
He also could have been trying to get other belongings because "I don't know what else he had in that hut," the witness said.
At one point, the man appeared to run around to the other side of the alley in an attempt to access the shelter from another angle, but the officers again chased him away, the witness said. One officer threatened the man with his club, the witness said.
Sam Watts, CEO of the Welcome Hall Mission, said the video is surprising but he said in every profession there are people who behave in an uncharacteristic way.
"We know that a lot of steps have been taken to try to improve but that doesn't mean the improvement is at 100 per cent," said Watts, and this video sends the message that there are still steps to take.
"This is not the way to respond to people who are in precarious situations. We need to do better."
Fort William First Nation is opposing a planned redevelopment of the Ontario Power Generation's (OPG) 117 year old Kakabeka Falls Generating Station, which is located in their traditional territory.
A building that sits at the corner of Sussex Street and Brunswick Avenue has had many lives over the last century — being a church, a school and offices. Now it's set to become housing, at a time when the city sorely needs it.
A Waterloo, Ont., elementary school principal will be sentenced in the new year after pleading guilty to child sexual exploitation charges following a joint investigation that involved the London, Toronto and Waterloo police services.
Students at UPEI have let their student union know what they want from the province this fiscal year, and those priorities are reflected in a 2024-2025 advocacy document brought to the legislature on Wednesday.
Larger communities in the N.W.T. will soon see a boost in their territorial funding to maintain infrastructure and deliver services — like water and waste management — but the increase still falls short of what communities need.
The toxic drug crisis has taken more than 47,000 lives in Canada since 2016 and the synthetic opioid fentanyl has become a household name. But now, what's believed to be an even more potent class of synthetic drugs is showing up in drug busts across the country: nitazenes.
The Liberal government and the NDP have agreed to introduce a two-month GST vacation on certain items before the holiday season, Radio-Canada has learned.
Veterinarians are warning Londoners to make sure their dogs are vaccinated and keeping clean after a deadly virus outbreak was declared in London this week.
Registered nurses rallied in St. John's Wednesday as part of a week-long convention, again calling on the Newfoundland and Labrador government to create permanent solutions to staff shortages and workplace violence.
New poll results released by Narrative Research suggest the Progressive Conservatives are heading into Tuesday's provincial election with a commanding lead over their political rivals.
A measles outbreak in New Brunswick is set to push Canada's annual case count to the highest it's been in five years, highlighting how infectious the disease is and how low vaccination rates have allowed it to take hold, says an immunologist.