Kidnapped and threatened with death with a pistol under copious insults: Tobie-Charles Angers-Levasseur, a homeless man from the center abandoned in the countryside by two agents of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), gave a disturbing testimony while the trial police began on Monday morning.
“You haven’t committed suicide yet, have you?” We want to see you here! »
“What are you waiting for to jump off a bridge?” You’d be doing everyone a favor. »
These are the insults allegedly received by Mr. Angers-Levasseur during a March 2010 police arrest in downtown Montreal.
On the street since his adolescence, he would have been moved from orientation by agents Patrick Guay and Pierre-Luc Furlotte, who would also have threatened him with a firearm. The Montreal police officers involved in this case were charged in 2018 with forced confinement, death threats and assault against Tobie-Charles Angers-Levasseur.
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, THE PRESS
Defendants Patrick Guay and Pierre-Luc Furlotte
At the time, he was known to local police as a user of fentanyl and cocaine. “The police know me by heart. I’ve never had a good relationship [avec eux]. They move me when I try to beg. »
The 38-year-old is still homeless.
Humiliated and terrified
The facts date back to the evening of March 31, 2010, says the victim. Unhappy at having been robbed of money, Mr. Angers-Levasseur throws a decorative shrub on the curb at the corner of boulevard De Maisonneuve and rue Drummond, Geneviève Graton told judge.
An SPVM van breaks in at the same time.
According to the victim, officers challenged him with “drooling comments.”
The supervisor in the police SUV allegedly grabbed a Sharpie from the victim’s pocket. According to him, he tried to write on his forehead. “To ridicule me,” he added.
Officers Furlotte and Guay would later arrive in another patrol car. They allegedly handcuffed the victim while showering him with insults, goading him to the point of prompting him to throw himself off a bridge. “They called me empty […] But I’m used to it,” the man said.
He also allegedly heard a male voice suggesting that he put a paper bag over his head, he says. Subsequently, this plan materialized in front of the district 20 station, according to Mr. Levasseur’s version of events.
“A trash bag will fit a trash can like you,” one of the officers allegedly told her before covering her face with the object, completely blocking her view. The officers also reportedly sprayed him with Windex. “I am itinerant, I emit odors,” commented Mr. Angers-Levasseur in court.
It would later be taken to Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, on the edge of Highway 40.
The two policemen offer him to help him commit suicide since he is not capable of it, according to his account. He would then hear the sound of a gun. “It was a click. In the back of my head, I feel pressure,” she told Judge Graton.
With the purse off her face and her wrists freed from the cuffs, she watches the car pull away. She doesn’t know how to get back to the city centre, she says. A motorist takes him to a gas station, where he calls 911 from a phone booth.
It must have been 2 in the morning and it was a bit cold, the victim remembered, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief, emitting a shy sob.
“I was traumatised. I’ve never been so happy to still be alive. »
Of the ride terrifying
“The police gave me ride. Tired of seeing me wander, they got rid of me like that ”, the victim described with constancy and in many details during her testimony.
The victim explains how, at that moment, some policemen from station 20 “deported” him out of town. A terrifying routine, according to the testimony.
Mr. Angers-Levasseur claims to have found himself in this situation several times, left to himself, without points of reference or money, he explained to Judge Graton. “It used to be the weekend. It took me two days to get back downtown. »
He took off his shoes in the patrol car when the police tried to take him away from downtown. He was hoping to “stink the vehicle” to get out of the vehicle sooner.
“It’s a technique I’ve found to disgust them,” she says.
The victim’s cross-examination is scheduled for Tuesday. The Public Prosecutor is represented by Mr.eg Julien Tardif and Vincent Huet. meg Michel Massicotte and Nicolas St-Jacques defend the two SPVM agents.
The accusations were formulated (2018) much later (2010) because the file of agents Guay and Furlotte was examined by the mixed team set up after the scandals that muddied the SPVM in 2017.
