Visible minorities in Montreal call for moratorium on police street checks

Groups representing visible minority communities in Montrealhave joined together in calling on the city to ban street checks, in the wake of a report byindependent researchers that found Montreal policedisproportionately stop black, Arab and Indigenous people.

They say the city needs to take immediate action while it reviews thosefindings.

They call foran immediate moratorium on arbitrary police stops and say the police service should ban them altogether, as Nova Scotia did last week.

The Montreal report, published earlier this month, found Indigenous women are submitted to the arbitrary stops 11 times more often than the general public. It found black people are stopped nearly 5 times more often and young Arab people, four times more often.

'Myth of criminal suspicion and distrust'

"Black youths leave their homes to carry out normal and sometimes mundane things, like everyone else," said Sharon Nelson of the Jamaica Association of Montreal at a news conference Friday.

"However, there seems to be a pervasive idea by some Montreal police that they are out to do something wrong or criminal, that their daily actions cannot be trusted simply because they are young and black."

"This pernicious myth of criminal suspicion and distrust must be stopped," she said.

Dan Philip, president of the Black Coalition of Quebec,said that in some cases, street checks have led to false accusations, and people have beenpressured into pleading guilty simplyto avoid having to go to trial.

"This should not happen in a society like ours," Philip said.

Follow Nova Scotia's lead, says councillor

Independent Coun. Marvin Rotrand, who also attended the news conference, highlighted the report's finding that street checks by Montreal police increased by 143 per cent between 2013 and 2017.

"It's unacceptable for anybody to get stopped on our streets without a valid security motive," Rotrand said."It's even more unacceptable when there's a built-in bias in the system."

He saidhe willsubmit a motion to city council next week proposing the moratorium on street checks.

Rotrandbrought up the example of Nova Scotia, where a report published last spring found Halifax police targeted black people six times more than white people in street checks.

The province sought a legal opinion in the wake of that report, and the former senior judge who co-authored it found that the practice is illegal and "not reasonably necessary."

As a result, last week, Nova Scotia'sjustice minister said the province would permanently ban street checks, and the Halifax police force has said it will issue a formal apology.