“Hey, guy! Is that your car?”
The tone of and the implications behind the question posed by a Longueuil police officer to a black man driving a BMW are at the centre of an appeal in Quebec Superior Court that Joel Debellefeuille hopes will lead to an end to racial profiling by police.
Being stopped by police for no good reason is all-too-common for Quebec’s visible minorities, Debellefeuille, 35, told a news conference Wednesday.
He explained why he is appealing a Sept. 29 Longueuil municipal court ruling that he pay $523 for refusing to hand over his identification when he was stopped by Longueuil police on July 10, 2009.
He did pay a $52 ticket he was also given at the time for not having up-to-date vehicle insurance papers.
Officer Salim Ojeil wrote in an incident report that he stopped Debellefeuille after checking the car’s licence plate, because the registered owner’s name, Debellefeuille, “sounds like a Québécois name and not the name of someone of another origin.”
Longueuil cops had stopped him three other times that week, Debellefeuille said. Those times, they verified he was the car’s rightful owner, warning him about making a wrong turn and about a faulty car light.
“I reached my boiling point that day, and the way (Ojeil) approached me, saying: “˜Hey guy! Is that your car?’, well I got into an argument with him and I told him “˜I would really prefer you speak to me like a human being,’ “ Debellefeuille said at the news conference, held by the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations. “I told him to call his supervisor.”
Debellefeuille, manager of a freight transport company, said what followed was an awkward 10 or 15 minutes as Ojeil, his partner (a person named in the ruling only as Officer Brunet) and Debellefeuille’s wife, stepdaughter and two friends waited for the police sergeant. Debellefeuille did show the sergeant his identification documents.
In an official recording of the court case, Ojeil said: “I am very respectful in my dealings with citizens. I do not use obscene language. I am always polite with people. If he felt offended, that’s his version of events.
“I explained it in all honesty: Debellefeuille sounds to me like a Québécois name, not a black person’s name. That’s why I stopped him. The only thing I wanted was to make sure he was the owner of the car. If he had showed me his documents we would have been finished in five minutes.”
The Superior Court appeal could take a year to be heard, and Debellefeuille has also filed complaints with the Quebec Human Rights Commission and the police ethics commissioner.
He has patience, he said.
Aymar Missakila, a lawyer hired by Debellefeuille, said the case raises the question of whether “drivers who are visible minorities with Québécois names constitute a valid reason for police to stop them and check their ID.”
He said the ultimate goal of the case is to get better racial sensitivity training for police officers and an end to racial profiling by police.
Fo Niemi, head of CRARR, said the case has the potential to be pivotal because Ojeil states clearly that race was a factor in his actions.
“The city of Montreal has used all kinds of legal obstructions to prevent these cases from going forward,” Niemi said. “Suddenly we have a case on the South Shore that allows racial profiling to be addressed by the courts.”
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