MONTREAL -- Four Montreal police officers are facing charges after more than three years of investigation into allegations of serious criminal acts linked to internal investigations by the Montreal police department (SPVM).
In a terse statement released on Friday, Quebec provincial police did not specify the names of the accused, nor did they specify the nature of the accusations.
The charges come at the end of a lengthy investigation by the Joint Investigation Team into the SPVM's internal affairs department, which is now complete.
Quebec's public safety ministry ordered the investigation in February 2017 following serious allegations about certain Montreal police internal investigations.
Rocked by allegations of fabrication of evidence, the Montreal police force's internal affairs unit was ordered at the time to hand over all investigations to the provincial police and an independent investigation team.
The accusations against the four police officers stem from what the Surete du Quebec called "a careful analysis of 1,020 files," which were added to 136 reports.
The joint squad, which looked at a little more than 250 cases, reported that "at the end of these investigations, four police officers were faced with charges," without any other details.
The joint team is co-led by the SQ and Quebec's independent bureau of investigators, the BEI, and made up of 43 police and civilian members from the SQ, the RCMP and the police departments from Quebec, Longueuil and Gatineau.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 24, 2020.
