By Canadian Press

Montreal police chief rejects street check moratorium despite racial profiling data

Jun 22, 2023 | 1:36 PM

Montreal’s police chief is refusing to impose a moratorium on street checks despite a second independent report concluding that racialized people are disproportionately targeted by the practice.

Fady Dagher made the comments today after he released a report by university researchers recommending he temporarily suspend random police stops.

Dagher says a moratorium would be purely symbolic, adding that he prefers taking steps to ensure police street checks respect residents’ rights.

Researchers from several Quebec universities looked at 2021 data and found that Indigenous Montrealers were six times more likely to be stopped than were white people in the city.

The data showed that Black people were three-and-a-half times more likely to be stopped than were white people, and Arabs were two-and-a-half times more likely to be stopped by police compared with white people.

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Dagher says it is worrying that there was no real change in the numbers since the researchers produced a report on the same topic in 2019.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 22, 2023.

The Canadian Press