Any Negro Will Do

(testimony taken from CRARR website http://crarr.org/?q=node/19299)

In a case of Any Negro Will Do (a term to refer to the police practice of arresting a Black person based on a vague racialized suspect description), a young Black man was arrested in broad daylight in downtown Montreal by the police, while going shopping with a friend, and charged with theft. He was identified by police officers as the young Black man who had robbed someone downtown four months earlier; he protested, claiming total innocence and a case of mistaken identity. Not only was he charged, brought to the police station where he was detained for almost five hours, required to provide fingerprints and have a mugshot taken, but he was also banned from a wide area of downtown until his court date, which would be four weeks from the arrest. This sweeping police practice effectively aims to make downtown a “Black-free zone” (CRARR has documented numerous cases involving this practice). When his hearing took place, the charge was withdrawn by the Crown for a simple reason: the police got the wrong youth.

Corp policier (SPVM, SQ, GRC, agent de la STM, etc):