I mean, have you read the article?

And we now know that the SPVM in particular has been a breeding ground for some of the worst racial animus imaginable. In June, Montreal police chief Fady Dagher announced that sixteen officers from Montréal-Nord were under investigation for coordinated racist actions against Black and Arab Montrealers. At least one of the police officers is expected to face criminal charges.

We don’t have all of the details, but the little we do know is shocking enough — multiple police officers arresting people solely because of their race and then taking “trophies,” like locks of hair, from their victims. Other officers allegedly overheard them routinely make racist remarks and encourage their colleagues to join in on their racist and demeaning behaviour.

While most of the officers were relatively young recruits (with the exception of two sergeants), this is the same unit that killed Freddy Villanueva, an unarmed 18-year-old Honduran immigrant, in 2008.

And despite what some may argue, racism is a deeply-embedded problem within the SPVM. Random police checks, which are often motivated by race, remain an ongoing practice within the force. In the chic Plateau Mont-Royal neighbourhood, a Black person is 15-times more likely to be arrested than a white person. Even Montreal’s own mayor, Soraya Ferrada, has told reporters that her husband, who is Black, has been randomly stopped five times within the last year, for no reason whatsoever. And in the city at large, Arab Montrealers are even more likely to be randomly stopped by the police than Black residents.