Police Ethics Commissioner

By Joel Ceausu
The Suburban

Two Montreal police officers have been suspended without pay for racial profiling and abuse of authority.

Quebec’s Tribunal administratif de déontologie policière ruled that Sergeant Michael Mayer and Constable Carlos Antonio Flores racially profiled a young black man, Stanley Jossirain, driving a car with other black passengers when they were traveling to a hockey game at a school in Saint-Léonard in 2019.

On the afternoon of March 13, 2019, the officers made a U-turn to follow Jossirain and his friends in his Nissan Altima and stopped them, claiming Jossirain did not signal his turn. Flores asked Jossirain for his papers, and Mayer asked the other passengers to identify themselves, one of whom refused. The driver then informed all his passengers that they were not required to identify themselves and closed the passenger window while the officer was attempting to look inside. Jossirain was issued tickets for failing to signal his turn and for obstruction. Mayer returned a Medicare card back to one of the passengers cut in half, claiming it was accidental.

Jossirain filed a complaint with the Police Ethics Commissioner. The Tribunal judge said it was clear that the officers abused their authority by detaining Jossirain, were engaged in conscious racial profiling, tried to conceal the true motivation of their stop and that the destruction of the passenger’s property was done intentionally and “with malice.”

Judge Benoit Mahon ordered a 36-day suspension for then-Sergeant Michael Mayer, and 33 days for Constable Carlos-Antonio Flores in his 22-page ruling on the complaint, five years — almost to the day — following the incident.

McMahon wrote that “these circumstances suggest a serious lack of judgment and maturity, two attributes that are essential to the police function.” He noted that both officers had about 12 years’ experience, but did not testify at their hearings and “nothing indicates that the police officers were truly aware of the seriousness of their actions or of the phenomenon of racial profiling in general… The Court therefore considers that their capacity for introspection is weak and that the risk of recidivism is high.”

“The suspension seems like a good amount of time, especially without pay,” says Red Coalition executive director Joel DeBellefeuille. “Those officers are going to have to think long and hard about what they did. And this also makes it clear for offending officers and their superiors as well that while they think what they are doing is OK, it’s not, and the way this case went was a play-by-play script of what black individuals go through on a regular basis in this city.”

He says “police have the last word before appearing in court, and in this case they encountered a driver who knows his rights but was still issued BS tickets anyway, which can take nine months for a court date to contest.” Meanwhile he says, the driver has to worry about a court date, his driving record, and soaring insurance premiums in addition to the degradation and humiliation of the race-based encounter. “This demonstrates that police still think they’re above the law when it comes to intercepting people of colour and disregarding their rights.” n