Citizens of the neighborhood where Mamadi III Fara Camara lives, wrongly accused of attempted murder on a police officer, demonstrated yesterday to denounce what they consider to be another case of racial profiling.
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“Once again, the treatment Mr. Camara has undergone is part of repeated practices on black people. As we have seen, there have been several other cases lately, ”said Ève Torres, coordinator of the Parc-Extension neighborhood table, which organized the event.
“Justice for Camara! […] The police must be held accountable! Chanted the hundreds of people gathered yesterday at the end of the afternoon in front of the Parc metro, in the Villeray – Saint-Michel – Parc-Extension district, in Montreal.
The rally took place a few kilometers from where the 31-year-old man was arrested by the Montreal Police Department on January 28 after allegedly injuring a police officer.
Several speakers took the floor, but the speech of the mayoress of the district, Giuliana Fumagalli, was interrupted by protests.
“We’ve been asking her for 4 years what she’s going to do with racial profiling, but she’s not doing anything,” said an angry citizen.
Injustice
But, for Jean-Claude Aimé Kumuyange, of the Debout pour la dignity collective, “anger is legitimate because injustice always hurts”.
He recalled that the acquittal on Thursday of the police officer Christian Gilbert, who caused the death of Bony Jean-Pierre in 2016 during an operation to dismantle a network of drug traffickers, can only fuel “fear and anger ”.
Almost at the same time yesterday, the Montreal police chief, Sylvain Caron, exonerated Mr. Camara in addition to offering him a public apology.
But this time, “we have to go beyond excuses,” said Marlihan Lopez, member of Black Lives Matter Montreal.
“We cannot continue to put band-aids about the injuries, and it’s not going to work out just with an investigation. The government must take concrete action to resolve the problem. “
Skin color
And the problem, some experts say: the arrest of this falsely accused black man looks like racial profiling.
Mr. Camara’s skin color has “absolutely” played a role in this whole saga, in connection with the troubled – and frequently denounced – past of the SPVM in its treatment of people of color, says Anne-Marie Livingstone, postdoctoral researcher at the ‘Munk School of International Affairs and Public Policy, Toronto.
– With Hugo Duchaine
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