City of Montreal appealing parts of a class-action on racial profiling by police, will compensate victims

The City of Montreal assures that it will compensate racialized people who suffered racial profiling by its police force following a Sept. 3 Quebec Superior Court judgment that found the city is liable for the discriminatory and wrongful acts by SPVM officers.

But, it’s appealing part of the decision, because of the way compensation is calculated for a category of victims.

“We completely accept the conclusion of the judgment because we’ve said it before: there is racial profiling and we need to address it and the victims need to be compensated,” said Gracia Kasoki Katahwa, Montreal executive committee member responsible for the fight against racism and systemic discrimination.

“The reason why we are deciding to go to the appeal is because for us, and it’s really a technical element in the judgement, we believe that the victims need to be individually compensated for racial profiling.”

RELATED: Racial profiling a ‘systemic problem’ in Montreal police, judge rules in class action

Montreal was ordered to pay between $2,500 and $5,000 to racialized people arrested without justification between 2017 and 2019. According to City data, there were nearly 40,000 arrests of racialized people during this period.

The Black Coalition of Quebec brought on the lawsuit and estimated it at $171 million.

“There are three subgroups that the judge ruled that they should be individually compensated. We agree with that. It’s just really a part of the subgroup that she wants them to be collectively compensated. And we think that sending millions and millions of dollars to lawyers and the government that doesn’t recognize systemic racism is not the way to go,” explained Katahwa.

Mayor Valérie Plante recognized systemic racism and racial profiling when she testified as part of the class action.

“You have to note, if not, in a sense, praise the city and the mayor’s commitment to combating systemic racism and racial profiling, even though that commitment is not always conducive to change or to a reduction of police racial profiling practices,” said Fo Niemi, the executive director of Centre for Research Action on Race Relations (CRARR).

The Black Coalition of Quebec says 10,000 to 30,000 victims could come forward to seek compensation.

“A lot of citizens that have been victimized by racial profiling may have a lot of problems proving because the time frame to be defined and to be included to be compensated is that you have to show that this practice occurred at a certain time during 2018 and 2019,” said Niemi.

Niemi was at a meeting with city officials Wednesday going over their decision.

“Politicians have to be careful how to tell the police to do their job because police officers are guided by the police act as a provincial legislation with provincial directives as to how to do policing,” Niemi said. “So there are a lot of, shall we say, challenges to be ironed out in this appeal eventually by the Court of Appeal. And I can see this case going all the way to the Supreme Court.”

Katahwa says, “The victim needs to be compensated. And that is an element that the mayor said in court that the victim should be compensated because this is the step of reparation that we’re in and this is a new step in this discussion.”