Human Rights Tribunal orders Repentigny to award $8k to Black teacher after police racial profiling incident

In its first decision on racial profiling in Repentigny, the Human Rights Tribunal ordered the municipality to pay $8,000 to a Black high school teacher.

Francois Ducas was driving his BMW to work on the morning of December 8, 2017, when two officers followed him for kilometres for a routine check, stopped him, and asked for his ID. When he refused, he was arrested, handcuffed and searched. He later received two tickets in the mail totalling $631.

“I’m happy that for the first time in Repentigny, they’re recognizing racial profiling even if it’s years that we’ve been denouncing it,” said Ducas. “The city, the police officers have always denied the existence of racial profiling I think it’s a good start.

“And the fu­­­ture will tell how the city and the police conduct themselves, but as a whole, the other side I’m very disappointed by the judgement because the police officers will get to go on, it’s as if it wasn’t their fault,” he explained.

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The Tribunal concluded that the stop of Ducas was an act of racial profiling but that what followed, including the arrest and the search, was not.

“I’m happy that for the first time I broke a barrier, and I leave the place for others who are victims of racial profiling to make the complaint and to not be discouraged.”