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Tuesday, August 10, 2010

More Riots Possible in Montreal Due to Rampant Racial Profiling Says Expert 



The above video is a CBC news report from two years ago about the riot that occurred in Montreal after the fatal shooting of an unarmed, 18-year-old Freddy Alberto Villanueva by police. Two years almost to the date later comes this report:

"Some of the most extensive evidence yet suggesting racial profiling by its officers has been produced from within the Montreal Police Service, but the force is disavowing the internal study.

The report suggests that the number of young black men stopped and questioned by police in Montreal’s sensitive neighbourhoods is “much too high” and even amounts to “fishing expeditions.”

This “alarming” increase “touched primarily blacks” such that by 2006 and 2007 between 30 and 40 per cent of young black men in these areas faced police identity checks, compared to 5 to 6 per cent of whites.

Meanwhile, only about 5 per cent of the checks yielded arrests or infractions. “A large proportion of these checks,” study author Michel Charest concludes, “can be judged as arbitrary or malicious.”

Charest doesn’t mince words when it comes to the implications of the findings: another riot is possible if the population feels targeted — “profiled” — by police, and can be sparked by an identity check “that turns bad.”

“The probability of a second riot is not nil,” he warns, questioning whether the proportion of crimes committed by blacks warrants the mass control.
"

Click HERE to read the full article, "Racial profiling 'alarming' in Montreal" from the Toronto Star.

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