A Montreal man who alleged he was the victim of racial profiling at the hands of the infamous Agent 728 and another SPVM officer has been awarded a $40,000 judgment by the Quebec Human Rights Commission.

The judgment stems from an incident in May, 2012, where SPVM officer Stephanie Trudeau and another officer accosted plaintiff Julian Menezes and some of his friends as they came home from a wedding in the Plateau. After exiting their cab, Menezes said the group came across a cyclist who was in visible distress while dealing with the officers.

The cyclist told the group he was stopped for not having a proper light on his bicycle but that he believed he was stopped for wearing a red square on his clothes, a symbol of solidarity during the 2012 student strikes.

"We said, 'Look, we'll just wait here to support you through this, wait as witnesses and stay in the background,'" said Menezes.

Menezes said Trudeau then confronted him, assaulting him verbally and alleging he was drunk. He said he was then handcuffed and thrown to the ground and put in a police car.

He said they called him a 'fucking Indian' and threatening to put him in jail, saying that he was a ‘skinny bitch’ who would be raped there.

Menezes said he was then taken on what’s called "a starlight tour," in which he was driven around the city with no seatbelt on with the officers often stopping abruptly. The "tour" took him from the Plateau to close to Cremazie metro, "taking back roads, alleys, not a straight directory, either," he said, "along with stops along the way where I was subject to insults and harassment."

“There was no seat belt put on me and Officer Trudeau sped up and kept slamming on the brakes with the intention being my facing hitting the Plexiglas which it did, so I suffered injuries to my face as well,” he said.

He added that what shocked him was that the officer acted as though the incident was normal.

“There was no shock on his face,” said Menezes. “He was less active than Officer Trudeau but participated just as much and that’s what really worries me. It seemed like this was usual, it was a police procedure that had happened 100 times before.”

Menezes was given a $146 ticket for refusing to obey police.

Trudeau, the other officer and the SPVM have until Friday to respond to the ruling. An ethics case regarding the incident is scheduled for April. 

Menezes said that should the case be appealed, he would continue to pursue his complaint.

"I've taken it this far and I think it's important, not for the sum of money, but for the precedence it sets," he said. "That there is racial profile happening, that there are abuses that happen. It puts pressure on the SPVM to do something concrete about it rather than Band-Aids."

Fo Niemi, the director of Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations, said an appeal is likely.

“The city tends to fight tooth and nail for these type of cases so we haven't seen the end of this,” he said.

The police ethics committee will also hear this case in April.