The Quebec government announced on Tuesday that an inquiry will be launched into the wrongful arrest of Mamadi III Fara Camara by Montreal police that occurred on Jan. 28.
Camara was wrongfully arrested and accused of attempted murder of a police officer after a Montreal policeman was allegedly disarmed and assaulted while on duty in the city’s Parc-Extension area.
He was kept in a detention centre for six days before being released when after further analysis of the security camera footage, Camara’s testimony was proved correct — it wasn’t him who allegedly assaulted the officer.
Quebec’s Deputy Premier and Minister of Public Security Geneviève Guilbault said an investigation is being launched to shed light on the events that led to the arrest, detention and charges laid against Camara.
“As Minister of Public Security, my first concern is to prevent innocent people from finding themselves in situations similar to that experienced by Mr. Camara,” Guilbault said in a press release. “The trust our citizens have in our police (force) and judicial institutions is at stake.”
The minister’s press release, however, makes no mention of the work of the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP) who laid the charges in the first place.
Judge Louis Dionne, who will be conducting the investigation, was Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions from 2007 to 2011, the year he was appointed judge of the court of Quebec.
Quebec Premier François Legault commented on Tuesday’s announcement at his press conference, saying he has full trust in Dionne to investigate the Montreal police in this case.
“No one knows the system better than judge Dione does. We have the best person to get to the bottom of this,” Legault said during his press conference on Tuesday. “It doesn’t make sense — Quebecers don’t like to see what they’ve been hearing (about) for a week.”
However, when asked about a McGill professor calling the series of events leading to the wrongful arrest and nearly week-long detention of the innocent man “a clear example of systemic racism in Quebec” — Legault said “it’s too soon to tell whether it was a case of racism.”
Legault, on several occasions in the past, has denied the existence of systemic racism in the province.
Spokesperson for the Montreal Police Brotherhood union Martin Desrochers did not offer Global News a comment but said the union has taken note of the inquiry.
Global News also reached out to the Montreal police for comment, but they said none of their spokespeople were available to speak on the subject.
The police force, however, wrote in a statement:
“The SPVM offers its full cooperation in the investigation entrusted to the Honorable Judge Louis Dionne by the Minister of Public Security, Ms. Geneviève Guilbault, in the case of Mr. Mamadi Camara. We respect the decision made and will be transparent throughout the process.”
On Feb. 5 Montreal police director Sylvain Caron extended his apologies to Camara and his family for the ordeal.
Camara’s lawyer, Virginie Dufresne-Lemire, said the inquiry offers no guarantee of a transparent process.
“What we understand is that the final report may be public but it’s not guaranteed, which is really problematic for us because we want an exercise that will be transparent and public,” Dufresne-Lemire told Global News.
Dufresne-Lemire says there is also no guarantee the judge will look at whether there was racial profiling or not.
The head of Montreal In Action, a non-profit fighting against racism and for diversity and inclusion in the city, says the fact that a judge was appointed to the inquiry speaks to a larger issue.
“That we know that there is no impartial adjudication of these cases from the Quebec’s police ethics committee to the Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes (BEI),” he said. “Maybe it’s not just one Superior Court judge, maybe we need a different tribunal to analyze all cases of racial profiling in connection to the SPVM.”
According to the Ministry of Public Security, Dionne will begin his investigation on Feb. 22 for a maximum period of five months.
—With files from The Canadian Press, Global’s Gloria Henriquez and Alessia Simona Maratta
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