On February 17, 2023, the Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales (DPCP) announced that no charges would be laid in the death of Jean René Junior Olivier, who was shot on Aug. 1, 2021, after police were called to his mother’s home in Repentigny.
Not surprisingly it was deemed a “justifiable homicide” where the issue of race did not enter the equation. From my perspective, when dealing with the death of a Black man at the hands of the police in this country, “race” should always be considered in the analysis. Here is why:
Racial profiling is a practice by the police of stereotyping a person’s race, color, ethnicity or national origin, to determine whether to stop, search or investigate him or her for alleged criminal activity. It also occurs when law enforcers apply disproportionate measures to segments of the population based on racial stereotypes.
Walter Lippmann, an influential American journalist, claims stereotyping occurs anytime you are grouping races or individuals together and make a judgment about them. We all do it.
Being that the power of the anti-Black stereotype is deeply interwoven in North American culture, most people hold some form of racist stereotype. In R v Le, the Supreme Court of Canada remarked that stereotypes that exist today about African Canadians reflect anti-Black racism, which is historically rooted in slavery and racial segregation.
In both, the American and Canadian societies, Black males, young and older, have historically been stereotypically portrayed as oversexed, violent, and menacing street thugs.
Since police officers are the products of their environment, racial profiling by law enforcement is most often a matter of implicit bias and the use of acquired stereotypes about race and crime. It can unconsciously affect police officers’ decision-making and even become part of the “normal” way a police service operates. It’s systemic!
The racial stereotyping of Black propensity for criminality, have historically led North American police to conduct unjustifiable arrest, searches or use excessive force when responding to perceived danger.
For example, in 2015, Andrew Loku, a mentally ill Black man who had immigrated to Canada from South Sudan, was shot by the Toronto police outside his apartment seconds after he refused to put down a hammer.
In a sad irony, the apartment complex Loku lived in was operated by the Canadian Mental Health Association.
After the Ontario Special Investigative Unit (equivalent to Quebec’s BEI) did not find grounds to lay criminal charges against the subject officer, community pressures led by Toronto Black Lives Matter forced an inquest into Loku’s death.
In a 2017 report the chief coroner recommended that the police “Use of Force Model” be renamed and redesigned, to incorporate and emphasize communication, disengagement and containment, and that the use of “lethal force” become a true “last resort” option”.
Organized community pressure with a specific defined objective can work.
Unfortunately, police officials are often able to legitimize police excessive use of force, while erasing race from the equation.
The DPDC’s decision delivers yet another serious, perhaps fatal, blow to the legitimacy of policing in this province amongst racialized communities.
I am proposing two community approaches to ensure this case is analyzed suitably. The first is through having lawyers dedicated to the case, to seek a judicial review of the DPCP’s decision.
It is a costly and lengthy legal approach which could result in forcing the DPCP to review its decision through the lens of critical race theory.
Secondly, the community MUST mobilize and demand a public enquiry by the Coroner’s office in the death of Junior Bence.
As it did for the Joyce Echaquan inquiry, perhaps this approach will provide a way for the criminal justice system in Quebec to listen to “the experts” on the impact of criminal stereotyping on Black people in this province, and force police services to review and rename its police “use of force model” as they did in Ontario.
Fundamentally, there is an urgent need for a reframing of the problem of racial profiling by law enforcement in this province, as a public health and safety emergency matter; not solely for Black people but also for the whole fabric of our society.
Based on stereotypes…
