Should Police Conduct Mental Health Checks?

Earlier this month STM officers pepper sprayed Montrealer in close proximity during a mental health check. How can police be held more accountable as police funding continues to rise? Local 514 investigates...

In today's show, Leonora Indira King, community organizer and former candidate in the Montreal municipal elections running in Parc-Ex under Quartiers Montréal discusses how to move away from police responding to wellness checks and what other community resources we can lean on. We are also joined by researcher and associate professor Ted Rutland to discuss police accountability and why the police budget keeps increasing each year despite calls to reinvest in the community sector. Activist Sam Miriello also joins the show to discuss his thoughts on the police budget increasing each year and the movement to defund.

In 2019, Montreal's police operating budget was over $662 million. This is compared to the $115 was allocated towards social housing at this time.

In June 2020, Montreal mayor Valerie Plante said she was open to redistribute funds. However, in fall Projet Montreal increased the police budget by $15 million. Ahead of the municipal election last month, Plante pledged to hire 42 new officers to address gun violence with $5.5 million in funding.

So how does policing affect Black, Indigenous, people of colour (BIPOC) community?

A report by Le Devoir published November 22, cited that Aboriginals and visible minorities are overrepresented in statistics of Quebecers killed by police. 81 Quebecers have been killed by police since 2001.

So let's look at the stats collected by Le Devoir. Le Devoir collected over 331 coroner's files from 2001 to 2021, which found that 81 civilians killed by guns, 70% were under the influence of drugs/alcohol, 70% had a known mental health problem, an addiction, had suicidal thoughts or made worrying comments before the event and 45.7% had a history with the police. Only 10 of the deceased were involved in criminal activity when the police intervened and 5 police officers were shot dead.

In the past seven years in Greater Montreal alone, half of the men who were shot by the police were Black.

For Quebec as a whole, Aboriginals (which accounts for 4.5% of Quebec's population) represent more than 13.5% of deaths. Le Devoir discovered that 11 Aboriginal people among those died by police gunfire. Aboriginals are the over-represented community affected by police violence in Quebec.