‘Gives objective evidence’: Calls renewed for all police in Quebec to wear body cams

MONTREAL (CityNews) — More and more people from Quebec’s marginalized communities say they are buying dash cams in a bid to protect themselves in the event of interactions with police.

This comes after the City of Montreal rejected a motion to get its police officers to wear body cameras.

“When this happened to me and I thought to myself what can we do?” said defence lawyer Kwadwo Yeboah. “If the police are not going to equip themselves with these cameras, the citizens will start equipping themselves. I myself equipped two of my cars with those cameras.”

In January, Yeboah says he was a victim of racial profiling when police officers pulled him over. He says as he provided the officers his insurance papers, one of them grabbed and twisted his arm and told him he was being arrested because his driver’s license was fake.

Yeboah says his story is one of many where a citizen’s word goes against an officer’s. Without video proof, Yeboah says it is very difficult to win a case in the courtroom.

“A lot of decisions are based on the police report, which not all the time reflects exactly what happened,” said Yeboah. “Because the police might have their version, the defendant has his version, and then there’s the truth.

“And the only person that can really say the truth is the camera.”

Many major police departments in North America are moving to equip their officers with body cameras, including Toronto and New York.

The RCMP is also acquiring thousands of licenses to equip officers with body cameras as forces across the continent deal with the aftermath of wrongful arrests and incidents of police violence caught on camera.

Quebec is now planning to launch a pilot project where provincial police in four regions — including Rimouski — would wear body cams.

The City of Montreal participated in a body camera pilot project between May 2016 and April 2017, but nixed the proposal citing the cost and problems with the technology.

Several in Montreal are wondering why the city is backing down.

“Body cams are seen to have more professional policing, more accountability,” said city councillor Marvin Rotrand. “It tells the story of what actually happened. It’s a protection for the police officer and the citizen involved in the interaction. It gives objective evidence.”

Advocates are also pointing to more high-profile incidents like the wrongful arrest of Mamadi Camara in January. The charges in that case were dropped after evidence emerged that Camara was innocent.

WATCH: Black man wrongfully jailed speaks out (Feb. 15)

Proponents of body cams are renewing their demands for all police in Quebec to wear them.

Yeboah says if Montreal will not equip its officers with body cameras, then citizens should protect themselves.

It is not against the law for citizens to film police officers on the job as long as they are not disrupting their work.

“It takes two minutes on Amazon and there’s a whole lot of choice,” said Yeboah. “So people will take matters into their own hands and get their own camera and film the police.”