Anti-Racism Trainings in the SPVM - A Critical Look

The Montreal city police budget is increasing by $45 million in 2022, the second highest increase in the Montreal Police Service's (SPVM) history.

Following calls to defund and even abolish the police following protests in 2020 addressing violence towards racialized communities conducted by the police, can anti-racism trainings prevent racial profiling and police brutality?

Ted Rutland, associate professor at Concordia University doesn't think it will reduce systemic racism or prevent racial profilings. Rutland says in 1986 and 1988, SPVM officers had some of the best multicultural trainings on colonialism slavery. However, he said that following this, the police killed more Black people than any other year.

Rutland also noted that current officers were trained by officers who completed multicultural trainings.

Local 514 reached out to Daphne Colin, President of the Public Safety Commission to better understand the need for raising the police budget, but Colin declined an interview with Local 514.

Local 514 also reached out to SPVM’s media relations for details on their anti-racism training and plans to reduce racial profiling. They did not comment, but forwarded Local 514 to a webpage detailing the SPVM’s citizen relations policy.

In 2020, the SPVM acknowledging that there is systemic discrimination in its organization. That summer, Montreal’s police force issued a framework for street checks, identifying that street checks must be based on observable factors and not discriminatory motives.

A team was set up to assist officers in street checks to enforce the policy and an independent strategic supervisor was hired to question the SPVM’s practices “to ensure services are free from any form of discrimination, whether systemic or individual”.