“DRIVING WHILE BLACK” IN LAVAL: BLACK LAWYER TO APPEAL POLICE ETHICS COMMISSIONER'S DECISION

Montreal, October 21, 2011---A young Black lawyer who was stopped earlier this year by the Police on his way home in Laval, a municipality north of Montreal, will file an Application to the Police Ethics Committee for review of the Police Ethics Commissioner's decision.

Last month, the Commissioner dismissed the man's complaint of racial profiling, finding that there was no racial bias in two officers' decision to stop and check a car in the wee hours of the morning because it was registered to a woman (who happened to be the man's mother residing at the same address). The Commissioner's decision ignored key evidence such as the car model and the driver's attire (which the Commissioner never documented), the officers' conduct and the fact that he had been stopped four times prior to this stop, by the Montreal and the Laval police.

Since the Commissioner does not have guidelines for investigating and analyzing complaints of racial profiling, it is not clear how he defines and deals with this practice. There have been very few Committee decisions on racial profiling in the last five years, largely due to the fact that the race dimension had often been inadequately or improperly addressed by the Commissioner during the investigation and when a case is brought before the Committee.

CRARR is also assisting another complainant in her application to the Superior Court for a judicial review of the Committee's ruling that contains an incorrect analysis of racial profiling. The case will examine how the Commissioner and the Committee apply current Canadian jurisprudence on racial profiling.