Racial profiling: a police of Longueuil receives a reprimand

QMI agency

Saturday, 10 march, 2018 09:51

UPDATE
Saturday, 10 march, 2018 09:55

Look at this article

MONTREAL – police in Longueuil received a reprimand from the police ethics Committee for an intervention conducted in 2010 and amounting to racial profiling.

The Committee’s decision, made on the 28th of February last, relies on a judgment of the Court of Québec, which stated that the officer Melanie Cappuccilli, the police Service of the urban agglomeration of Longueuil, was arrested and “illegally detained” Sekou Kaba, originally from guinea, on suspicion that his vehicle could be stolen. The Court had held, however, that “the offence does not demonstrate that the police acted in bad faith,” leaving it to the ethics Committee to determine his sentence.

However, neither the Court nor the ethics Committee have addressed racist comments to the police would have spoken. According to what was reported by the Montreal Gazette, Ms. Cappuccilli would have qualified Kaba and his nephew, 18-year-old “two beautiful purebred black” and would have said, when Mr. Kaba asked him if he had committed an offence, “no, but you are two black men in a luxury car that is not registered in your name”.

On march 30, 2010, the officer Cappuccilli had arrested Mr. Kaba while he was travelling on board the Toyota Highlander registered in the name of his spouse. The police, who had less than one year of service, had been instructed to monitor this type of vehicle due to a wave of thefts of cars.

The man refused to identify himself when the officer Cappuccilli assured him that he had not committed any offence, and had treated her as racist, while informing him that the vehicle belonged to his wife. The police had then asked for reinforcements, and Mr. Kaba had come to identify themselves, confirming that it had the same address as the owner of the vehicle.