Laval police officer suspended without pay over racial profiling case against Black man

A Laval police officer has been suspended for 18 days without pay after Quebec’s police ethics committee ruled that he racially profiled a Black man in 2017. 

The officer, Michael Boutin, came under fire for the incident in which he shoved the man at a gas station traffic stop and deleted the man’s cellphone recording of the interaction.

After knocking the phone to the ground, the officer asked the man, Pradel Content, to unlock the phone so that the footage could be erased.

• READ MORE: Black man told 'they shoot people like you' wins racial profiling case against Laval police officer

At the end of the May 14, 2017 altercation over an alleged distracted driving violation, the police officer told Content that he’s lucky to live in Quebec rather than the United States “because they shoot people like you there,” the committee's written decision quoted the officer as saying.

The officer testified that he saw the man using his cellphone while driving, but the committee said Boutin's evidence was not credible and sometimes "implausible." 

The ethics committee imposed the sentence on Jan. 7, according to the Montreal-based Montreal-based Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR), which supported the man in his complaints to various oversight bodies.

Content is expected to speak publicly about the officer's sentence at a virtual news conference on Thursday.

The sentence brings the nearly five-year ordeal to a close, however, the case is still before the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal.