When Emmanuel Abraham filed a racial profiling complaint against a Terrebonne, Que., police officer nearly a decade ago, he never thought he’d still be waiting to see if the officer would be punished.
“For me to wait 10 years — that’s just beyond crazy, you know?” said Abraham.
Few cases of racial profiling make it to Quebec’s police ethics tribunal. And for those, like Abraham’s, that do, critics say the lengthy, complex process discourages complaints from being made in the first place.
In December 2014, Abraham, who is Black, was driving in the Montreal suburb of Terrebonne when he was pulled over by a police officer who asked him what he was doing there.
The officer, Const. Stéphanie Lemay-Terriault, told him she’d checked his licence plate, which showed the owner lived in Montréal-Nord.
Abraham, who was 18 at the time, explained that his father lived in Terrebonne and he was returning to his mother’s house in Montreal. He provided proof of insurance and his registration, but Lemay-Terriault gave him a ticket because she said the registration was crumpled and illegible.
“I made my stop right, I didn’t speed, I talked to her nicely,” said Abraham. “I called my father right away and we said, ‘Ah non, not this time.”‘
Abraham successfully contested the ticket and made a complaint with Quebec’s police ethics commissioner. He felt he’d been stopped because he is Black.
In 2020, the police ethics tribunal, known in French as the Tribunal administratif de déontologie policière, ruled the traffic stop was justified and did not believe it was racially motivated.
As far as Abraham knew, that’s where his case ended.
He had no idea the tribunal’s decision was still making its way through various appeals until CBC News contacted him.
Abraham can’t believe he was not kept up-to-date about his own complaint.
“They have my address, they have my email, they have my name. They have everything on me,” said Abraham. “They can send me a paper every time she appeals. I didn’t get nothing.”
‘The battle can be long’
It’s not unusual for cases to take years to go through the complaint process.
But Fo Niemi, a civil rights activist who has advocated on behalf of victims of racial profiling, said he’s never heard of one that has taken as long as Abraham’s to conclude.
“That delay can be discouraging for a lot of people,” said Niemi, the executive director of the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR). “The battle can be long, in part because police officers and police departments don’t like to lose, especially when the case involves racial profiling.”
He does not think the police ethics commissioner’s office has enough resources to move quickly.
In Abraham’s case, the officer was cited for ethics violations — including racial profiling — but it took five years to get a hearing at the administrative tribunal, which has the power to sanction officers.
At the time, random traffic stops were part of an officer’s discretionary power. According to court documents, Lemay-Terriault told the tribunal she asked Abraham why he was in Terrebonne because he might have needed to update his address on file. The administrative tribunal accepted that explanation.
But the tribunal’s decision was overturned by the Court of Quebec in 2021 following an appeal by the police ethics commissioner. The judge concluded the officer had pulled Abraham over “consciously or unconsciously” because of his race or colour.
Lemay-Terriault appealed that decision, but her appeal was rejected last month.
She has 30 days to appeal that rejection. If no notice of appeal is served within this period, the next step will be a hearing date regarding sanctions.
Discipline rare
In 2023, CBC News investigated how few racial profiling complaints against Quebec police result in discipline.
If a complaint is accepted by the police ethics commissioner, the priority is, first and foremost, conciliation — and most cases are settled in this way.
Depending on the nature of the complaint, the commissioner can bypass conciliation and order an investigation to determine if there were ethical breaches. This is typically reserved for serious allegations such as gross negligence or misconduct. If the investigation finds the officer committed ethical violations, the case is then sent to the tribunal.
Between April 2017 and April 2022, only 11 complaints resulted in a hearing at the administrative tribunal and only four of those resulted in a police officer being disciplined.
According to the commissioner’s latest annual report, it received 248 complaints related to racism, discrimination or racial profiling in 2023-24, a 20 per cent increase compared to the previous year.
Since that CBC News investigation, the police ethics tribunal has heard about a dozen racial profiling complaints. Several of those involve complaints against Terrebonne police, including that of Pierre Marcel Monsanto, a Black resident who claims he was stopped 15 times by police while driving during a three-year period.
Complainants forgotten
If a police officer is found guilty of breaching the police ethics code, Niemi said it’s almost automatically appealed, which is the officer’s right.
But the initial complainant can get lost in the back and forth between the police and the courts.
“The citizen who is at the heart of the complaint is forgotten,” said Niemi. “The appeal here, either from the police officer or from the commission’s office, is always between the two of them. The citizen is nowhere part of the proceedings.”
In an email, the police ethics commissioner’s office said it is mindful of the time required to process complaints and says it strives to carry out its duties as diligently as possible.
It said complainants are informed of legal proceedings, but not updated about any subsequent follow-ups unless they specifically request it.
But Niemi said the province should try to find a way to better support complainants because the process can be long and taxing.
“That’s why we always tell people to please hang on, don’t drop out because this is the only way to change the system,” he said.
Abraham said he can’t help but feel the system is designed to favour and protect police officers.
Although the government and individual police forces claim publicly to have zero tolerance for racial profiling, he says the long complaint process sends a different message.
“I just feel like they don’t care,” said Abraham.
He is concerned the officer in his case has continued working with no sanctions. He also doesn’t know if she’s received any extra training such as learning about unconscious bias.
Terrebonne police confirmed Lemay-Terriault still works for them. They would not speak to her case directly, but said training to combat racial and social profiling is provided on an ongoing basis.
Lemay-Terriault’s lawyer, Frédéric Nadeau, would not provide any comment while the case is active.
“I just feel disappointed,” said Abraham, who is now 28 and works as a nurse. “Ten years is too much.”
For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.
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