‘The right to ask questions’: Motion rejected for Montreal police chief to address city council in 7 days
Posted October 20, 2026 4:16 pm.
An emergency motion to have Montreal’s police chief appear before city council to respond to a number of serious allegations against officers from two police stations was rejected by the mayor on Monday.
The motion, filed by Official Opposition Projet Montréal, asked that SPVM police Chief Fady Dagher address allegations surrounding neighbourhood police stations 21 and 39.
Ensemble Montréal and Mayor Soraya Martinez-Ferrada rejected the motion.
“It’s going to happen later. The citizens want us to respond right now,” said Ericka Alneus, the leader of Projet Montréal.
Alneus proposed the motion that would have forced Chief Dagher to address within seven days the recent allegations that a police officer from Station 21 in downtown Montreal urinated on a homeless person and a second officer allegedly photographed a suspect in a humiliating position.
As well, the motion sought to address Station 39 in Montreal North where a 16-member patrol unit was disbanded in June following allegations that officers kept the hair of racialized citizens as trophies.
“The allegations are severe and outrageous,” Alneus said. “We’re talking about cutting hairs of people. And last week at the PDQ 21, we’re talking about peeing on homeless people. We have a responsibility to ask questions quickly.”
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Fo Niemi, the executive director of the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR), believes Dagher needs to speak on the allegations as quickly as possible “to reassert this authority, to reaffirm the commitment to serving the Montreal public.”
“And more importantly, to rein in any other police officer who does not live up to the standards of performance and professionalism of the police profession.”
In the end, Mayor Martinez Ferrada and the Ensemble Montréal administration amended the motion and voted to wait until the conclusion of the ongoing administrative, disciplinary and criminal investigations before Dagher would respond to elected officials in order to protect the integrity of the investigation and to avoid any interference with it.
“I think it’s important in a situation like this to let the investigation take its course,” said Sam Watts, the CEO and executive director of the Welcome Hall Mission. “I hate to see something as serious as this turned into a political stunt. And so we have to be very sure that we allow the latitude for the police to investigate a situation that they self-reported. So I believe that this is something that’s very serious. It needs to be taken seriously. I think it is being taken seriously.”
The motion on Monday also included an amendment to ensure that the City of Montreal’s Public Security Commission hold a closed-door session concerning the allegations involving Station 21 to obtain all relevant information regarding ongoing investigations and proceedings, as well as holding a public session to address this situation.
“We’re not in a situation where we’re dealing with the tip of an iceberg,” Alneus said. “So for me, it’s a broader scale. It has been two important and disgusting events happened in two PDQs (neighbourhood stations). There’s something about the organization and the culture within it that I think we have the right to ask questions about.”
