Montreal man upset with penalties for cops who racially profiled him, says officers 'should be fired'

Two Montreal police officers who tackled and detained a Black man five years ago will be suspended without pay for 30 days, Quebec's police ethics committee ruled. 

The suspension comes four months after the same committee found the two officers guilty of racial profiling.

At a news conference Thursday, Fo Niemi, executive director of the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR), said the ruling marks the first time that the tribunal has imposed such a heavy sanction for racial profiling and condemned it "in a language rarely seen in a tribunal decision."

Errol Burke was getting milk at his local Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grâce convenience store on Feb. 18, 2017, when he was violently intercepted by officers Pierre Auger and Jean-Philippe Théorêt, who slammed him to the ground, searched him and then handcuffed him. 

Burke, who stands five-feet, seven-inches and was 54 at the time, was mistaken for an 18-year-old Black suspect who was more than six-feet tall.

While Niemi says the new ethics committee ruling establishes new benchmarks for racial profiling and police conduct, Burke says the penalties don't go far enough. 

"[These officers] injured me, they attacked me, they assaulted me ... police need to be fired for this type of thing," Burke fumed.

He says paltry sanctions for police who are found guilty of wrongdoing will dissuade people from reporting these types of incidents and will have no real effect on the officers. 

"How is that going to [deter] them from doing this again?" Burke said. "This is why nothing has changed. Police don't suffer any true consequences."

A 'pernicious form of discrimination': committee

Last fall, the police ethics committee found the two officers guilty of racially profiling, using excessive force and illegally searching Burke. 

In June 2020, Quebec's Human Rights Commission also issued a decision in Burke's favour, ordering the City of Montreal to pay him $35,000 in moral damages and each officer to pay him $5,000 in punitive damages.

CRAAR says the SPVM refused to comply with the decision and the case is now before the Human Rights Tribunal, with hearings expected in late 2022.

In a statement to CBC News, the SPVM says it is aware of the ethics committee's latest decision but will make no comment. The Montreal Police Brotherhood also refused to comment. 

In a 17-page ruling dated Feb. 4, the ethics committee wrote racial profiling "is a particularly pernicious form of discrimination" and called it a "daily reality for the visible minorities who experience it."

The committee also noted that the officers' reports trivialized the incident, adding their continued efforts to defend their actions justified the suspension.

"The efforts made ... to conceal their true motivation, namely racial profiling, and to blame their actions on Mr. Burke's behaviour, convinced the committee that a 30-day period of suspension without pay is appropriate for each officer," the committee wrote.  

Burke says it's hard to put into words how stressful it's been dealing with this situation for almost five years, and is hoping to see more punitive measures.

"I have to wait five years to find out that [the officers] are going to go home and go, 'Oh well, I don't have to work for like a month,'" and then everything goes back to normal for them and they're happy," Burke said. 

"It's not right."

For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.