Black Montrealers, blindsided by new provincial street check policy, say it needs rewriting

MONTREAL -- In French they’re called “interpellations”—a police officer stopping a citizen randomly, checking their ID and asking questions.

After years of criticism of how such stops are carried out, and particularly how non-white people are subjected disproportionately to them, Quebec’s government has put out a province-wide guide to the practice, weeks after Montreal police revamped their policy.

But both have Montrealers saying the authors need to start over—that they’ve left the bar simply way too low.

“We understand that for most police departments in Quebec, that this is the first time when officers will be specifically told that they must have an observable, valid reason to stop someone,” said Yvonne Sam of the Black Community Resource Centre.

Officers may never have been told “that racial origin, religion, sexual orientation…are not reasons to halt someone on the street,” she said.

TOO LOW A BAR

But that’s not enough, and the province’s new instructions leave a lot of problems that will undermine them, said a coalition of 29 community groups and individual leaders who today asked the province to go back to the drawing board.

There were troubling signs even before anyone read the policy, critics said.

In an unusual move, the policy was released late Friday night in a written release with no extra announcement or press conference.

The province developed and released it “without any fanfare,” said Fo Niemi, the director of the Centre for Research Action on Race Relations. It “came as a surprise to many of us."

That also meant no consultation went into it, he said.

One of the major changes brought by the province is the creation of a form that police must fill out after a police check. It’s supposed to force officers to explain why the stop was necessary and who initiated it.

It also refers to a need for more education for officers on the rights of citizens.

MORE SPECIFIC RULES REQUESTED

But Niemi and others said this on its own won’t help. Niemi said the policy doesn’t address the fundamental pattern of criminalizing “driving while Black,” he said, or “basically, racial profiling of Black drivers.”

Lawyer Marie-Livia Beauge told CTV that the biggest problem is that the new policy lacks any system of accountability for officers.

“There are no consequences in this policy,” she said. “There’s no way to control the officers to see if, yes or no, they’re actually going to do [what’s required].”

The timing is also confusing, the coalition says. Next week, Montreal’s public security commission is already scheduled to hold a public consultation on Montreal police’s new policy.

“What will be the usefulness of a consultation on Sept. 1 when the issue seems to have been decided already on the provincial front?” asked Niemi.

Snowdon city councillor Marvin Rotrand said the two policies should have been designed in a way where Quebec’s would form the baseline.

“We would like to consider Quebec’s proposal a floor so that the SPVM could go further,” Rotrand said in a release from the coalition.

He also said that both policies, Montreal’s and Quebec’s, fail to ultimately respond to the City Council motion last November to “halt all discriminatory street checks,” Rotrand said.

CTV requested comment from the public security ministry and Montreal’s public security commission but didn’t receive a response.

Among other changes the coalition says are needed, it wants clear instructions to officers about the Highway Code and what grounds within it allow officers to stop someone.

Many visible minorities say this is a priority, according to the release, because they're often stopped just because they’re driving a nice car.

Both policies also allow police to stop people for “incivilities,” which can include very minor problems such as spitting or littering, or the vague idea of loitering. Without more clarity, those can be used as excuses, the coalition said.

Police also still have grounds to use a vague phrase as grounds for a street check: “the collection of information that is of interest to the police mission,” as translated from French.

The group called that a “catch-all” that could be used to explain any street check, “no matter how questionable.”

Finally, the group wants data collection to be taken more seriously at the provincial level. In the new Montreal police policy, officers must note the ethno-cultural identity of the person stopped. This isn’t as strong a requirement as it could be, the group said—Toronto police, for example, must collect race-based data—but they pointed out that the Quebec policy lacks even this requirement.