‘Defund the police’ protesters demand more than $300M in cuts to SPVM budget

“We very rarely see accountability when police kill people,” says Jessica Quijano, organizer of Saturday’s defund the police protest in Montreal. Alyssia Rubertucci has the story.

By Alyssia Rubertucci and Kelsey Patterson

MONTREAL (CITYNEWS) – An annual demonstration to honour the victims of police killings took on a new meaning for protesters this year.

The annual vigil, which has taken place in Montreal every October since 2010, commemorates Canadians who lost their lives at the hands of law enforcement officers. This year, protesters joined their voices to the global “defund the police” movement.

Racial justice protests following the death of George Floyd earlier this year have prompted cries to “defund the police” from cities across Canada, the United States and around the world.

(Credit: CITYNEWS/Samsara Rainville)

“Police brutality and police killing people, especially racialized people – Black men and Indigenous people in Canada,” said Sandra Wesley of Montreal’s Defund the Police Coalition. “We’re here also to put forward the solution to this problem, and a lot of other problems, and it’s defunding the police.”

Protesters gathered at Sir Wilfrid Laurier Park on Saturday afternoon before marching in the streets of the city’s Plateau-Mont-Royal neighbourhood. They chanted “No Justice, No Peace” and “Defund the Police.”

Organizers are demanding that Montreal police’s annual budget of $662 million be slashed in half.

“We’re asking for over $300 million in cuts to remove police officers from our lives,” said Wesley. “To remove unwanted contacts. To remove programs that aim solely to police marginalized communities to do profiling and that don’t actually provide any beneficial services for the community.

“We want to use that money and instead fund programs, services, alternatives to the justice system, but also basic needs like housing.”

Jessica Quijano, another of the protest organizers, believes cutting the SPVM’s budget could also bring a form of justice to the families of victims of police killings.

“We haven’t seen any justice for families like Pierre Coriolan, Nicholas Gibbs and [Abdirahman] Abdi in Ottawa, we very rarely see any accountability when police kill people,” she said. “This is why we need to completely rethink our model when it comes to intervention.

“It’s really urgent that people listen and the we come up with a different model.”

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