After being detained, handcuffed, and fined for jaywalking, students allege that police mistreated them
The students were eventually released but were each issued two fines totaling $550 — one for jaywalking and another for obstruction of justice. The incident has sparked accusations of racial profiling and excessive force.
Two Concordia University PhD students, one Black and one Indigenous, allege that they were subjected to abusive treatment by Montreal police in an incident that occurred early in the morning of July 22nd, 2023.
The students, Amaechi Okafor, an international student from Nigeria, and Wade Paul, a member of the St. Mary’s Maliseet First Nation from Fredericton, claim they were unjustly detained, handcuffed, and fined while walking home from a club in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce area.
According to their account, the two were walking down St. Jacques Street around 3 a.m. when they encountered a police operation. In an effort to avoid interfering, they decided to walk around the scene by stepping into the street. However, they allege that shortly after, a police car swerved onto the sidewalk to cut them off.
Paul recalls the chaos of the moment: “Next thing I know, a police car is pinning up onto the sidewalk, cutting us off. I’m being ambushed from behind, yelled at. I’m very confused; I can’t make heads or tails of what anyone is saying as they’re all yelling over the top of each other.”
Both men assert that they were aggressively searched, handcuffed, and placed in a police cruiser despite their attempts to calmly explain themselves. Okafor expressed feeling dehumanized by the encounter: “I felt abused. I felt less of a human because I wasn’t being heard, even if I was doing it very, very calmly. I felt picked on.”
The students were eventually released but were each issued two fines totaling $550 — one for jaywalking and another for obstruction of justice. The incident has sparked accusations of racial profiling and excessive force.
Majiza Philip, a friend of the students who herself experienced a violent arrest in 2014 leading to a broken arm and subsequent legal settlement, criticized the police actions. “We had a Black man and an Indigenous man walking at night. Jaywalking does not merit being handcuffed, arrested, and put in a car. It’s a blatant violation of their human rights,” she stated.
Fo Niemi, executive director of the Center for Research Action on Race Relations (CRARR), echoed these sentiments, arguing that the fines should be immediately revoked: “Walking in the street at 3 in the morning to avoid a police operation on the sidewalk and being accused of jaywalking — it’s an exaggeration of the worst kind.” CRARR has since filed civil rights and police ethics complaints on behalf of the two students.
In response, the Montreal police (SPVM) issued a statement saying, “The SPVM does not comment on specific police interventions. If a person feels wronged during a police intervention, it is entirely within their rights to file a complaint. That said, we will be checking with the units concerned.”
