Police discriminated against local blacks, commission rules

There is still no word on whether or not Montreal police will pay $60,000 to a prominent local member of the black community and two of her friends after officers came to her Dollard des Ormeaux home in 2004, mistook the three for robbers, and used expressions the Quebec Human Rights Commission deemed racial slurs. "Right now, our legal affairs office is analyzing the recommendations of the Commission," said police inspector Patrick Lalonde, although he could not say if police will appeal the decision.

Beyond a comment by Montreal executive committee member Marcel Tremblay made to reporters at a scrum where he expressed sympathy for the three people in question, the city is not commenting either. "If it wasn't for the verbal misconduct, I wouldn't have filed anything," said Gemma Raeburn, 57, of the twin complaints she launched with the help of the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR) to the Police Ethics Committee and the Human Rights Commission.

On Nov.11, 2004, Raeburn and two black men, Peter Charles and Frederic Peters, were busy emptying out her garage, moving boxes to her backyard cabana, she said.

At around 11:30 a.m., Raeburn was making a phone call in the kitchen when she heard her friend Peter Charles scream her name from the garage. She rushed there, cordless phone in hand, only to come face to face with four armed officers, she said. "One of them pointed his gun at me, and he said 'freeze, don't move," recalled Raeburn, sitting in her living room as she spoke to The Chronicle. "I thought I was being punked," she said.

The police told her they had received a phone call warning them of a robbery in progress at the address in question. In order to prove she lived at the house and it was all a misunderstanding, Raeburn moved back to the kitchen and showed police her driver's license with her home address.

The first verbal faux-pas occurred when police stopped pointing their weapons at her and Peters. Raeburn questioned the police's bursting in with weapons drawn, wondering whether they would do the same if she and her friends had been white. "Bullets don't see colour," one officer, Roger Carbonneau, replied.

A few minutes later, when Raeburn went to her backyard, she saw her other friend, Frederic Peters, with two police officers. From him she found out that an officer there had also made a racial slur. When Peters claimed he used to be a police officer at his home country of Grenada, where this kind of incivility would never occur, he was told to go back there. "If you don't like it here, why are you here? Why don't you go back to your country?" Officer Isabelle Nault asked.

After the incident, Raeburn said it was not an easy decision for her to file complaints. However, given her important status in the local black community, she had to set an example. "I couldn't let this one go unnoticed," she said.

In 2007, the Police Ethics Committee recommended a day of suspension without pay for one police officer, and three days' suspension without pay for the other. "They are currently appealing this judgment," Lalonde said. "Not an even an apology letter came from them," Raeburn said.

CRARR, executive director Fo Niemi did not hold his breath waiting for the city to settle. "Based on other cases we've had with the city," he said, "we don't think they'll pay."

Raeburn said she would use part of the $20, 000 as donation money, both to the CRARR for its important advocacy work on behalf of minorities, as well as to restart the West Islandd Youth Models, a club that she had helped found but could not continue leading due to a complication with surgery. "I only found out last year who made the phone call," Raeburn said, pointing to a home one street west of hers, but with a backyard adjacent to her own. The caller in question was a 17-year old girl at the time, who had seen Raeburn and friends in her backyard and mistaken them for robbers with black "things on their faces." "The only black thing on my face is my skin," Raeburn said, touching her cheek.

Lalonde pointed to the cultural sensitivity training all Montreal police officers have begun to undertake. "Around 1500 police officers have been trained since 2005," he said. He said the training is accomplished by professionals in race relations who are on a hire contract by Montreal police, and the force hopes to train 4485 members by the end of 2008. <@Cp>Chronicle, Raffy Boudjikanian<@$p>