Red Coalition files police ethics complaint against Terrebonne police force and city administration

Anti-racism group, The Red Coalition has filed an ethics complaint against the entire Terrebonne police force and city administration.

In a press release issued, the group says the complaint was prompted by an incident on Nov. 21, 2023, where four young Black girls were allegedly viciously attacked by a white man wielding an axe and a knife. The assailant, who resides next door to the family of one of the victims, allegedly hurled racial slurs and threatened to kill the girls if they didn’t leave the neighbourhood.

Despite multiple calls to 911, the complaint says that Terrebonne Police showed “a shocking lack of empathy and failed to take appropriate action.”

“Nobody was seemingly responding to their cries, their literal cries for help,” said Red Coalition Founder and Executive Director Joel DeBellefeuille. “To me, it’s just beyond words why it should have taken that long, not only to charge the man, but also not even warning the public that there’s somebody in the neighborhood that committed this crime and were looking, keep your eyes peeled.”

Back in Dec. of 2023, CityNews Montreal reported about the incident, which the Red Coalition described at the time as “reminiscent of a racist 1950s southern U.S. town.”

Complaint says Terrebonne police department ‘dismissive and slow to act’

Lyndia Barthold, the mother of 18-year-old Destiny, one of the four girls attacked, reported the incident to Terrebonne police that evening. She says it was only until the Red Coalition became involved that the victims were contacted by an investigator — on Dec. 11, just under three weeks later.

“It’s not like they have so many things going on that they couldn’t like assign an investigator right away on such a situation,” Barthold said at a press conference with Red Coalition a few days after the incident. “Those are not things that happen every day in Terrebonne.”

“They finally put an investigator on the on the file like three weeks later,” Barthold said at the time, “which means we could’ve been dead.”

Red Coalition says police identified one of the Barthold’s neighbours one month after the alleged incident and charged the 51-year-old with assault with a deadly weapon, death threats and mischief.

On July 24, 2024, the Red Coalition was informed that after nine months, the DPCP (Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales) authorized and directed criminal charges against the aggressor for

“threats, armed assault, assault causing bodily harm, mischief, and possession of burglary tools.”

Alain Babineau, the director of racial profiling and public Security at The Red Coalition, says it’s not normal that police weren’t immediately in contact with Barthold after the incident.

“We have to call it like it is: anti-Black hate crime,” said Babineau at the time. “I repeat, anti-Black hate crime committed in Terrebonne on Nov. 21. The ways in which the police responded in this matter also needs to be denounced and held to account.”

Police Ethics Commission orders immediate investigation         

The complaint filed on July 25 specifies that despite multiple calls to 911, the police were dismissive and showed no empathy, and alleges that the City of Terrebonne and its police department were negligent in handling the case and failed to ensure the safety of the Barthold family.

The complaint was accepted by the Police Ethics Commission on July 26 and after a 24-hour preliminary review, Police Ethics Commissioner Melanie Hillinger has ordered an immediate investigation.

“There was a lot of lapse on city admin as well as the police and so we want to hold them accountable. And this should be a clear message to all police forces across the province that they’re not immune to vicarious liability and to be basically implicated or have a complaint filed against them through the police ethics committee,” said DeBellefeuille.

The Red Coalition says it chose to use vicarious liability in this complaint to emphasize that the alleged negligence observed was not just an isolated incident by individual officers but a systemic failure of the entire Terrebonne Police and the city administration.

“By holding the city accountable through vicarious liability,” says the press release, “The Red Coalition aims to ensure comprehensive accountability and prompt systemic changes to prevent such incidents in the future.”

Terrebonne Police said they that will collaborate with the Police Ethics Commissioner and will await the results of the investigation, but cannot comment further on the case at this time.

“It’s not just going to keep the Terrebonne Police and the city admin on their toes. We feel that it’s also going to have a broader effect, a rippling effect across the province,” concluded DeBellefeuille.