WARNING – This story contains details that some may find disturbing
A police officer in Montreal will be in charge of the “integrity” department of the forces after he was filmed forcibly pushing an unarmed homeless man with a face in a concrete block.
The video, shot on Thursday in Chinatown, shows a relatively young man standing up after hitting the block with his head forward, only to have a police officer push him again.
“I think it was a matter of inches,” the man who shot the video told CTV News.
“He could have broken his skull, he could have broken his neck.
After the man got up, obviously disoriented, “the cop didn’t even go to see if he was okay … he just picked him up and pushed him again,” said the man, who did not want to know his name. published for fear of retaliation by the police.
The 17-second video, which he posted on TikTok, already had about 50,000 views a day later and caught the attention not only of Montreal police but also of those working with people living on the streets of Montreal.
“This man looked harmless, he didn’t look aggressive at all from what I saw,” said James Hughes, chief executive of Old Brewery Mission, a nearby men’s shelter.
“So what I witnessed in the video was completely unjustified,” he said. “We’ll talk to the police about it ourselves.”
Montreal Police (SPVM) said in a statement on Friday that they were “well acquainted with the video, which is currently being shared on social media” and were investigating the incident.
They followed shortly afterwards and said the force had officially launched an internal investigation, which would be led by SPVM’s “Integrity and Professional Standards Unit”.
Two police officers are present in the video, but it is unclear whether both are under investigation.
THE FIRST HEAD INJURY NOT CATCHED ON CAMERA
However, the man who filmed it says that both police officers were involved and that the whole episode was even more embarrassing than the 17-second video shows.
He turned on his camera only after seeing another police officer – the second to appear in the video – inflict a different type of head injury on the man, he said.
At the time of the video, the man was visiting a friend in a building opposite a “semi-abandoned” area between Clark and St. Urbain, north of René-Levesque Blvd., where people living on the street gather, he said. He looked out the second-floor window to see the unfolding scene.
“There was … a hut the man had built. These were two pallets with another on top and a tarpaulin. It was kind of like a house type, “he said, which is usually rebuilt in the same place.
As the police approached, the homeless man was sitting in it with a blanket hanging like a door. He pulled out the blanket to talk to the cops, then one of the cops suddenly knocked down a pallet, balanced on top.
“He pulled it so that the top board fell on the head of the man in the enclosure,” the man said.
“The man touches his head, looks at his hand to see if there’s blood, so he must have hit him pretty hard,” he said. – Then I started shooting.
The man, looking stunned, appears in the video arguing with a police officer or complaining about what happened.
Then the other [officer] he came … he looked as if he didn’t know that the man had just been hit by a board, “said the passer-by.
“Then he just decided to push him.”
Later, after the man stumbled down the street, “the cop pulled out his bat and started chasing him,” the man said, who was also not videotaped.
‘EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE’ OF POLICE TRAINING FOR THE HOMELESS
The Old Brewery’s mission routinely trains novice officers and teaches them to do the “exact opposite” of this type of thing, Hughes said – and does so with the support of the SPVM leadership, he said.
“Most of the time, they’re left alone … they’re left to their own devices,” Hughes said.
Homelessness is on the rise in Montreal, and police also tend to leave temporary structures alone, he said.
Young officers are learning to approach as a possible source of support by asking if a person needs help and if they are in “trouble” of any kind, get an ambulance or otherwise link them to health, Hughes said. .
“Up to 1,000 people sleep on the streets of Montreal every night. And the police service has improved a lot over the years … that seeing this incident of violence against a man sleeping roughly on the street is really, really frustrating and very sad, “he said.
“In fact, what seems aggressive, I disassemble the place where someone is staying, and then aggressively pushing it out of the way, as we have seen, and the person will hit my head in the concrete block for a while, whether it makes me scratch, for example, what happened? “
I’m waiting for the video of a police intervention that circulates online. The guests together with the agents are all unacceptable and ombrage to the excellent work of our police officers. The @SPVM did the question to make the light on this situation.  # polmtl
– Valérie Plante (@Val_Plante) April 29, 2022
The man who shot the video said he thought people currently using this corner of St. Urbain had been encouraged to “move out” of their old haunt, just north of the Village, and had recently begun gathering. in Chinatown.
But other than eye sores, he said he had rarely seen any more serious problems there.
“Most of the addicts you talk to are nice people. They’re just struggling with something,” he said. “You see them doing some crazy things, but as long as they don’t attack ordinary people, I don’t understand why they bother people.”
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