(The following article is from the September 1-15, 2008, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

Special to PV

The recent killing of Freddy Villanueva, the city's 43rd victim of police violence in 22 years, sparked an angry response in the streets and new demands for greater accountability of police forces.

     Montreal's Collective Opposed to Police Brutality (COPB) reports that on Saturday, August 9, at about 7 pm, "a police officer from Station 39 fired four bullets that injured two youth and killed Freddy Villanueva, 18, in Montreal-Nord."

     The COPB calls this case "part of a long history of repression, abuse and brutality by the Montreal police. What happened is unjustifiable. The police know that they committed an enormous error. They are trying to hide the facts, speaking of twenty youth, when eyewitnesses assert that there were five or six. The police say they were attacked when witnesses assert that they saw no direct confrontation between the police and the group of youth. Four bullets were shot at youth who were not armed and who were reacting to a scene of police brutality that was happening in front of their own eyes..."

     The Montréal and provincial police (the Sureté de Québec, SQ) are widely expected to cooperate in efforts to clear the officer who killed the youngest son of the Villanueva family.

     Several hundred people came to an August 13 evening vigil for Freddy Villanueva, and over 200 attended his funeral the next day. Police and politicians have pledged a speedy and fair investigation of the killing, but residents of racialized communities in Montreal remain sceptical.

     As the COPB says, "It's unacceptable that police investigate other police officers in such sensitive cases. Police organizations are in solidarity with each other, which is not difficult to prove. During a press conference organized by COPB in 1996, a former SQ investigator, Gaetan Rivest, confirmed tampering an investigation to the benefit of Dominic Chartier (a Montreal police officer who killed Yvon Lafrance in 1989). He explained that such practices are common within the different police services in Quebec. So, it's not shocking that killer cops are systematically cleared by their colleagues."

     Of the 43 cases documented by COPB going back to the mid-1980s, only two police officers have ever been charged - Alan Gosset, who killed Anthony Griffin in 1987, and Giovanni Stante, who killed Jean-Pierre Lizotte in 1999. Both were acquitted.

     As for the "transparency" of SQ investigations, the COPB points out that in the case of Mohamed Anas Bennis, killed on December 1, 2005 by police officer Yannick Bernier, the investigation report has still not been made public.

     The "riot" which followed the shooting, says the COPB, "was a clear expression of the dissatisfaction of an entire community. Youth and even younger folks are fed up being targeted by the police, and being constantly harassed for the colour of their skin, age, and clothes. The people who participated in the uprising on Sunday did not come from street gangs and were not criminals, as expressed by Yvan Delorme, chief of the SPVM (Montreal police). Rather, they were residents of the neighbourhood and the surrounding area and live daily with police repression and discrimination. They sounded alarm bells that must be heard. The Mayor and the SPVM chief must assure that police abuses will stop. At the very least, they should suspend the police officers involved in the death of Freddy Villanueva. For his part, the Minister of Public Security, Jacques Dupuis, must change the law so that police no longer investigate other police officers. There must be a public and independent police inquiry into the events (of August 9).... Finally, the police involved must be charged criminally so that they reply publicly for their acts."