Brutality, racism allegations deepen trust gap after years of complaints in Montreal

MONTREAL — Frantz Jean-Jacques remembers feeling hopeful after coming out of a meeting more than a decade ago with the commander of a police station in a multicultural neighbourhood of Montreal.

Over a dozen local residents attended, including a number of young men who shared troubling stories about their own interactions with police. They came to denounce police brutality and racial profiling and pressed the station commander to take action.

“It was a good meeting,” said Jean-Jacques, a former community support worker. “He had promised to investigate and ensure that kind of behaviour wouldn’t happen anymore, because it was unacceptable.”

At the time, Jean-Jacques was the head of ÉvoluJeunes, a community organization dedicated to supporting youths who had run-ins with the law in the neighbourhood.

Jean-Jacques said he recalled meeting a dozen young men in his office, reporting experiences of police brutality by a handful of officers.

“They were being told (by police) to tell their friends what happened, as a warning,” Jean-Jacques said.

He said he was able to initiate the meeting in 2015 after sending police a letter, accompanied by some photos showing the wounds of a young Black man who alleged he was beaten by police behind a restaurant. Anti-racism lobby group the Red Coalition shared a copy of the letter with The Canadian Press.

More than a decade after the meeting with the police commander, questions remains as to whether Montreal police did enough to address the allegations they heard that day. The Montréal-Nord police station is mired in a scandal and facing pointed criticism about allegations of misconduct and of a failure to address long-standing community concerns about racism.

The man who was featured in the photos and the letter from 2015 is now 39. He said he attended the meeting to share his story, but he has continued to be targeted by local police, ever since then.

“That tells you everything,” Jean-Jacques said in a recent interview. “That’s why young people are discouraged from filing complaints. Sometimes, the police seem to take the complaints, but that’s as far as it goes.”

The former community organizer said he has been thinking about the 2015 meeting in a new light in recent weeks after the current Montreal police chief, Fady Dagher, dropped a bombshell.

Speaking at a late Friday evening news conference in mid-June, Dagher announced police had disbanded a 16-member patrol unit in the neighbourhood over serious allegations of racism, discrimination and misconduct.

Dagher said two of the officers were suspended and potentially facing criminal charges, while the other 14 had been reassigned to other tasks.

He also expressed feeling “profoundly shocked” about the situation, saying that racism and other reprehensible behaviour was not acceptable within the ranks of Montreal police.

Dagher also confirmed police were investigating reports that some of the officers involved had taken locks of hair from some local residents as “trophies.” But he shared few additional details about the status of those involved and what they had done.

Just over a week later, internal police documents obtained by The Canadian Press through access to information legislation reveal Dagher provided an update to employees, saying in a recorded video that three officers were suspended.

Police have declined to confirm the latest information about the case in public, saying they would provide an update at a public meeting scheduled for Aug. 11.

On Friday, Montreal police released an outline of their presentation for the meeting.

It said they had already deployed a new team in the community on July 13 and were meeting with members of the community. The outline also said police planned to bring about real change in the neighbourhood and encourage everyone, including officers, to denounce wrongdoing.

While many local residents have said they are not surprised about the nature of the allegations shared by Dagher in June, the 39-year-old man said he was caught off guard when he heard police were finally taking action about complaints of misconduct.

Despite speaking out at the meeting in 2015 and filing several complaints against officers for discrimination, “nothing had happened” until “police started turning on each other,” he said in an interview.

The Canadian Press agreed not to identify him because he feared he would be targeted by police if his name was published in a news report.

About two months after the 2015 meeting, the station commander who participated, Martial Mallette, was reassigned to another station. He did not respond to requests for comment.

Montreal police confirmed in a statement that Mallette participated in the meeting and that the department conducted the “necessary followups,” but it declined to provide details “for confidentiality reasons.”

Patrick Lavallée, who was commander at the station from 2019 to 2022 and has since retired, said he never heard about the 2015 meeting. In an interview, he acknowledged police needed to do a better job of briefing supervisors whenever there’s a change in leadership.

“There’s no overlap — meaning the commander who leaves just leaves, and the next day he’s replaced by a colleague. Then you have to figure out how to meet up or talk to each other,” he said. “But that’s not how it should work; it should be institutionalized.”

But Lavallée rejected criticism that police did nothing to address concerns over the past decade. He said police have invested in the local station for decades and launched several pilot projects to regain public trust, including having a squad embedded in the community 24/7.

The neighbourhood was also selected for a police body camera pilot project in 2016, in part to address “tensions” between officers and residents following the 2008 police killing of 18-year-old Fredy Villanueva, according to a 2019 Montreal police report.

“I understand that there are people who might say they’re dissatisfied or that, historically, the grievances they raise make it seem to them as though nothing has changed, but I can’t subscribe to that view for even a minute,” Lavallée said.

But the 39-year-old man who attended the 2015 meeting said that “if anything, things got worse” after meeting with the former commander.

He shared video footage with The Canadian Press of a recent altercation he and other Black residents had with police in July 2025.

The man said he and his brother had joined a group of bystanders that evening who were watching and filming police arresting another man on the street. He said police called for backup and told the bystanders to move away. The officers also pointed flashlights at people who were attempting to film the incident, partially obstructing the footage.

When bystanders refused to leave, the man said police became aggressive and demanded to search his brother’s backpack. He said he told the officers they don’t have the right to search the bag and refused to hand it over.

Video footage appears to show him walking past an officer and bumping into him.

Within seconds, the footage shows he was standing face to face with an officer, who kicked a black plastic container toward his feet on the ground. He kicked it back a few centimetres “by reflex,” he said.

The footage then shows an officer suddenly moving aggressively toward the man and shoving him, before four other officers tackled him to the ground. He said the officers hit him and pulled his hair while he was handcuffed.

He was charged with assaulting a police officer and legal proceedings are ongoing in municipal court. He also said he filed a complaint with the police ethics commissioner following the incident.

He shared photos that appear to show a bruised area of his scalp where part of his hair was torn out. Other images appear to show scrapes on his face and legs.

“I thought I didn’t even have any hair left, that’s how bad it was,” he said. “I thought all my dreads were gone; I could hear my hair being ripped out.”

Montreal police said they do not comment on specific cases or incidents unless it helps advance criminal investigations or assist in the search for suspects, victims or missing persons.

“If a person feels they have been wronged during one of our police interventions, they have every right to file a complaint with the SPVM or an independent organization,” police said in an email.

The police brotherhood did not respond to a request for comment.

The man has confirmed he has had several criminal convictions including for drug-related offences, assault, and for obstructing a police officer. The last time he was convicted of a crime was in 2018, on a drug possession charge, and the rest of the convictions occurred between 2005 and 2011 when he was a young adult.

But Jean-Jacques noted that police are not allowed to get rough with someone just because they have a criminal past.

“Even if they’re engaging in criminal activities, the police … are to arrest them. But they can’t beat them up; they can’t shove them in the back of a police car to take them away — that’s illegal.”

Lavallée, the former station commander from 2019 to 2022, said that recent allegations of police misconduct are serious and that everyone agrees that, if they are true, those responsible should be punished.

With Dagher set to give the public an update into the internal investigations into police misconduct, the man said he wants the suspended officers to face criminal charges.

“They’re just as criminal as I am,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 10, 2026.

Erika Morris, The Canadian Press