Quebec’s human rights tribunal has found that a Black man who was stopped by police while dropping his son off at daycare was racially profiled.
The tribunal has ordered the Montreal suburb of Longueuil, a Longueuil police officer and a former police officer to pay Joel DeBellefeuille $10,000 in damages.
Dominic Polidoro, who remains a police officer, has also been ordered to pay an additional $2,000 in punitive damages.
“I’m trying to pinch myself in regards to believing it’s finally over,” said DeBellefeuille. “It’s been pain-staking, dragging on my emotions, and my family’s emotions.”
DeBellefeuille was stopped by police outside his son’s daycare in March 2012 after police followed his car for more than a kilometre.
READ MORE: Longueuil man’s racial profiling case heads to Human Rights Tribunal
According to the decision, Polidoro testified that he followed DeBellefeuille’s vehicle because he thought DeBellefeuille was looking at him, gestured towards him and said something to him while the two vehicles were stopped at a stop sign.
In his decision, Judge Christian Brunelle found that Polidoro’s explanation didn’t justify his stop of DeBellefeuille.
“It is highly improbably that a white man (or woman) who, while driving their vehicle observed a police officer while continuing to talk with the other passengers and gesticulating — as many people do incidentally while expressing themselves — would be considered a suspect for that sole reason,” Brunelle wrote.
Brunelle found that Polidoro’s actions could only be “rationally explained by the prejudices he maintained, whether consciously or not, towards a Black man driving a luxury car.”
DeBellefeuille, who was driving a BMW at the time, told the tribunal that he has been stopped “numerous times” by police.
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READ MORE: Another win for Longueuil man who accused police of racial profiling
The other officer who stopped DeBellefeuille, Jean-Claude Bleu Voua, was not ordered to pay punitive damages because he is no longer a police officer and could not be found by the tribunal. He is believed to have left the country.
“Hopefully this decision will at least be the stepping stone for people to wake up, to see what’s going on and actually address the situation,” said DeBellefeuille.
The Longueuil police service has also been ordered to improve its training around racial profiling and to evaluate its effectiveness.
It will also be required to collect racial data on people stopped by its officers.
That’s an important step, said Fo Niemi, the general director of the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations, which supported DeBellefeuille’s complaint.
Niemi said that data will make it harder for the police department to deny that racial profiling exists.
Niemi said his organization is looking to the courts because municipal and provincial politicians aren’t taking action against racial profiling.
“What we are seeing now is that these battles will have to be fought in the courts and when the court side with us and impose these decisions,” he said. “This is how we make progress.”
He also added that race-based data collection is an issue that’s been long debated in Quebec, and he hopes the decision will have a “universal application to all police departments and even to all public service departments in this province.”
Neither the Longueuil municipal government — which sought to have the case dismissed — nor its police service responded to a request for comment on Saturday.
READ MORE: Montreal couple claims they were victims of racial profiling, excessive force by police
Quebec’s Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission praised the decision in a statement.
The commission is also calling for another Montreal suburb and three of its police officers to pay $35,000 in damages to a Black man who says he was racially profiled.
Francois Ducas was also driving a BMW when he was stopped by Repentigny police.
Ducas, who objected to the stop and refused to identify himself, was handcuffed and searched.
Police issued Ducas, a secondary school teacher, two tickets, one for obstruction, the other for injuring a police officer.
The commission believes he was stopped because of his race.
Repentigny is challenging the commission’s decision. That challenge will be heard before the Human Rights Tribunal.
Marlene Girard, the director of communications for Repentigny, said she couldn’t comment on the case but that the municipality has “increased the number of initiatives seeking to bring the police service closer to the diversity of its population” over the past few years.
“Today we acknowledge that we still have work to do,” Girard wrote in an email. “We are being proactive, we are not waiting for the outcome of current cases of alleged racial profiling or future allegations in order to take action.”
On Monday, the Repentigny police service announced it has hired a consulting firm to develop a plan to be more inclusive.
However, Niemi said he believes the Repentigny police are still denying the seriousness of the problem.
-With files from Global’s Felicia Parrillo
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