The elected official in charge of Montreal police says he knew nothing about a United Nations report slamming the force's use of mass arrests until he read about it in the newspapers.
Georges Bosse, the city executive committee member responsible for public safety, was furious yesterday that provincial Public Security Minister Jacques Dupuis never notified him of the complaints to the UN Committee on Human Rights.
"How are we supposed to correct things if we aren't involved?" Bosse said in a telephone interview.
He said Dupuis, whose department and others were involved in preparatory work for the report, should have given him a heads-up about the complaints and the final outcome. Instead, Bosse claims, Dupuis spoke directly with the police force.
Nadine Rouillard, a spokesperson for Dupuis, couldn't say why Montreal was left out of the loop, but she denied the Public Security Department had spoken to the police force.
"We'll be consulting other ministries, evaluating the report and making recommendations," Rouillard said.
The UN committee's report called for an investigation into how the force conducts itself during protests. It said the "state party" should make sure the rights of people to protest peacefully are respected and only those who commit crimes during the protests are arrested.
"To arrest just the one person throwing the rock is easier said than done," said Montreal's assistant police chief, Pierre-Paul Pichette said.
Police try to use the tactic of mass arrests as seldom as possible, he said, but when someone uses a demonstration to commit a crime, the force must react.
Montreal police supervised more than 1,000 demonstrations last year and has already been at more than 900 this year, Pichette said. "So we're not stopping anyone from demonstrating."
But Montreal police have arrested people en masse and charged them with unlawful assembly, notably in 2002 at a demonstration against police brutality, in 2003 during a gathering of the World Trade Organization and last year during a demonstration against the provincial Liberals.
Human rights activists said the report appears in a climate where increased policing threatens to erode civil liberties.
"Montreal police are one part of the problem, but there's an extreme paranoia and fear of crime and terrorism that's sweeping North America to the point where we've forgotten about human rights," constitutional lawyer Julius Grey said.
Fo Niemi, of the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations, said those, like Bosse, who are responsible for the police force should be held accountable.
Bosse said people have to take some responsibility to remove themselves from demonstrations in which a few people decide to break the law.
"You can't give the police complete blame for this," he said.
Bosse said he wants to study the report to see where changes can be made within the force.
smontgomery@thegazette.canwest.com
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