SPVM officers provide testimony on behalf of students who claim they were wrongfully arrested for jaywalking
The students were eventually released but were each issued two fines: $548 for obstruction of justice and jaywalking.
Montreal police officers testified on Wednesday morning at a municipal court hearing concerning the arrest of two Concordia University graduate students in July 2023.
The students, Amaechi Okafor, an international student from Nigeria, and Wade Paul, a member of a New Brunswick First Nation, were detained, searched, and fined during the incident, which took place in the early hours of July 22.
The two students maintain that they were subjected to abusive and excessive treatment by police, and they are still unclear about the reasons for their detention.
According to Okafor and Paul, they were walking home from a club on Saint-Jacques Street in the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighborhood around 3 a.m. when they came across an ongoing police operation. To avoid interfering, they chose to walk around the scene by stepping into the street.
However, they claim that shortly after, a police car abruptly drove onto the sidewalk in front of them, blocking their path. The students allege that they were then forcefully searched, handcuffed, and placed in a police cruiser. "I felt abused. I felt less of a human," Okafor recounted in an interview with CityNews weeks after the incident.
The students were eventually released but were each issued two fines: $548 for obstruction of justice and jaywalking. Now, they are contesting these fines in court, where the officers involved testified for the prosecution and were scheduled for cross-examination by the defense.
The Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR) has filed complaints on behalf of Okafor and Paul with the Québec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission and the Police Ethics Commissioner. Both complaints have been accepted for investigation, signaling ongoing scrutiny into the police conduct during the incident.
