A Montreal police officer will respond to the “integrity” of the force after he was caught on video violently pushing an unarmed homeless man into a concrete block. The video, which was shot Thursday in Chinatown, shows a relatively young man staggering after hitting the block with his head first, only to be pushed back by a police officer. “I think it was a matter of inches,” the man who shot the video told CTV News. “He could have cracked his skull, he could have broken his neck.” After the man got up, obviously disoriented, “the cop did not even go to see if he was OK … he just picked him up and pushed him again,” said the man, who did not want to be named. was published for fear of retaliation by the police. The 17-second video, which he posted on TikTok, already had about 50,000 views a day later and caught the attention not only of the Montreal police but also of those who work with people living on the streets of Montreal. “This person looked harmless, he did not look aggressive at all, from what I saw,” said James Hughes, chief executive of the Old Brewery Mission, a nearby men’s shelter. “And what I saw in the video was completely unjustified,” he said. “We will talk to the police about it ourselves.” Montreal Police (SPVM) said in a statement on Friday that they “were well aware of the video currently circulating on social media” and were investigating the incident. They went on to say that the force had officially opened an internal investigation, which would be handled by the SPVM’s “integrity and professional standards department”. Two police officers were present in the video, but it is not clear if both are under investigation.
THE FIRST HEAD INJURY DID NOT HAPPEN TO THE CAMERA
The man who shot it, however, says that both police officers were involved and that the whole episode was even more disturbing than the 17-second video shows. He turned on his camera only after seeing another officer – the second in the video – cause him a different kind of head injury, he said. At the time of the video, the man was visiting a friend in a building across from a “half-abandoned” area between Clark and St. Urbain, just north of the Boulevard René-Levesque, where people living on the street gather. he said. He looked out of the second floor window to see the scene unfold. “There was … a hut the guy had built. It was two pallets with another one on top and a tarpaulin. It was a small house-type thing,” he said, which tends to be rebuilt on the same spot consistently. As the police approached, the homeless man was sitting inside with a blanket hanging like a door. He pulled aside the blanket to speak to the officers, and then one of the officers suddenly threw the pallet that was balanced on top. “He pulled it away and the top plank fell on the head of the man in the casing,” the man said. “The guy touches his head, looks at his hand to see if he has blood, so he must have hit him very hard,” he said. “That’s when I started shooting.” The man, puzzled, is seen in the video arguing with the police officer or complaining about what happened. That is when “the other [officer] he came … it seemed as if he did not know that the guy was hit with a board “, said the passer-by. “That’s when she decided to push him.” Later, after the man stumbled on the road, “the cop pulled out his bat and started chasing him,” the man said – also not recorded on video.
‘EXACTLY OPPOSITE’ OF POLICE EDUCATION FOR THE HOMELESS
The Old Brewery Mission regularly trains novice officers and teaches them to do the “exact opposite” of this thing, Hughes said – and does so with the support of the SPVM administration, he said. “Most of the time they are left alone … left to their own devices,” Hughes said. Homelessness is on the rise in Montreal and police are also generally leaving temporary structures quiet, he said. Young officers are being taught to approach as a potential source of support, asking if the person needs help and if they are in “need” of any kind, get an ambulance or otherwise link them to health care, Hughes said. “There are up to 1,000 people sleeping on the streets of Montreal every night. And the police have improved so much over the years … that seeing this incident of violence against a person sleeping badly on the street is really, really disappointing and very sad, “he said. “In fact, what seems to be aggressively dismantling where someone is staying and then pushing them aggressively from the middle, as we have seen, and the guy almost had his head hit this concrete square, lets me scratch my head, as it happened? “
I was shocked by the video of the police intervention circulating on the internet. The actions of the officers are completely unacceptable and overshadow the excellent work of our police officers. @SPVM is investigating to shed light on this situation.  # polmtl – Valérie Plante (@Val_Plante) April 29, 2022 The man who shot the video said he feels that people who are currently using that corner of St. Urbain were encouraged to “leave” their old hangout, just north of the Village, and more recently began gathering in Chinatown. But other than eye sores, he said he has rarely seen more serious problems there. “Most addicts you talk to are good people. They are just struggling with something,” he said. “You see them doing crazy things, but since they do not attack normal people, I do not understand why they bother people.”
