Montreal mayor calls for end to random police checks amid racial profiling investigation | Canada
Montreal’s mayor has called for a halt to random police checks as the city’s police force grapples with an internal investigation into racism and racial profiling by 16 officers.
Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada told reporters last week that her husband, who is black, was repeatedly stopped by police while driving.
“Like many other Black people and racialized people in our city, this happens too many times,” he said. He said the checks had occurred at least five times in the past year “for no apparent reason”.
Those statements came after the city’s police chief held a late-night news conference to announce the reassignment or relocation of more than a dozen officers; Investigators are investigating allegations that police officers, most of whom are young men with less than five years on the force, disproportionately target Black and Arab residents. Two more officers were suspended from duty and two cases were presented to Quebec’s director of criminal and criminal prosecutions to determine whether criminal charges should be laid.
“I was extremely surprised. I didn’t think this would be possible in 2026. I am so deeply hurt,” police chief Fady Dagher said, describing the officers as “staining our uniform”.
These officers are accused of cutting off dreadlocks from people during police stops and ticketing people based solely on their ethnicity.
Quebec’s new premier, Christine Fréchette, called the officers’ alleged behavior “unacceptable.” But like his predecessor Fréchette, he abandoned the idea that behavior reflected the existence of systemic racism.
“It’s my view that there is a small group behind these organized, repeated actions,” he said of the 16 officers under investigation. “This is not systemic racism. If it’s a small group, it’s not necessarily systemic. To me, systemic means on a larger scale.”
But allegations of racial profiling and systemic racism within the police force are nothing new for the state. In 2024, a Quebec judge awarded damages in a class-action lawsuit filed by residents who were racially profiled and arrested without justification by Montreal police. It also decided to pay compensation for “people who were physically exposed to racism” whose rights were violated by the police but whose evidence was not recorded.
In his ruling, the judge found that members of racist groups were overrepresented in police stops and that “a plausible explanation for this disparity is the racial profiling that characterizes many arrests.”
And in 2021, a Quebec coroner concluded that an Indigenous woman who was mocked by nursing staff while on her deathbed in a Quebec hospital would likely be alive today if she were white, calling her treatment an “undeniable” example of systemic racism.
Montreal’s mayor says a moratorium on random checks would be a good “first step” to repair relationships affected by police behavior.
“I think this is also a way to rebuild trust among citizens, and I think the police should look into it as well,” Martinez Ferrada said, adding that body cameras are crucial in combating future cases. “This is not going to solve the problem. This is one of the tools in our toolbox, but it’s not going to solve everything.”
