After Montreal police pepper-spray man in mental crisis, advocates call for more training, support

Montreal police were caught on camera pepper-spraying a man's face at close range Monday morning, and as the video circulates on social media, advocates have renewed calls for a change in the way officers respond to mental crises.

"They exposed the person to more trauma than is necessary," said Jean-Franois Plouffe of Action Autonomie, a group that defends the rights of those with mental illness.

"They should have stayed away and kept a vocal link with the person while waiting for someone else to come, an ambulance to come to take him to the hospital or psycho-social experts who could have taken charge."

CBC Montreal has viewed a five-minute, unedited version of the video. The audio is unintelligible, but it shows a group of four officers surrounding a person of colour whose hands are clasped in front of him, his back against a car.

The officers attempt to restrain the man, grabbing him around the neck and arms. The man bends at the waist, lifting one of the officers off his feet. The man was not lashing out violently, though he resisted being restrained.

The officers then back off. One pulls out a taser and points it at the man. Another approaches and deploys a steady stream of pepper spray at the man's face at close range. The man appears unaffected at first, and the officer sprays a second time.

Finally, the man drops to the pavement, face down in an almost fetal position and is taken into custody.

WATCH | Montreal police pepper spray unaggressive man at close range:

Montreal police pepper-spray man after mental health call

3 years ago

Duration 1:25

Eyewitness video provided to CBC shows a group of Montreal police officers attempting to restrain, then pepper-spraying a man. Police say they were responding to a call about a potentially aggressive man's mental health, and that an officer was injured during attempts to restrain him.

As it turns out, it was the man's friend who had called the police and asked for help, according to Montreal police spokesperson Const. Manuel Couture.

The man was unstable, not himself and could be aggressive, the friend told police, said Couture.

Officers located him on Hutchison Street in Outremont a short time later, at 7:15 a.m., he said.

The officers, speaking to him outside of his vehicle, determined the man was not stable as he was speaking "nonsense," Couture said.

The man tried to get back into his car, and officers attempted to stop him, Couture said. One of the officer's hands was hurt, and the other officers struggled to restrain him due to his strength, he said.

That's when officers decided to back off and use pepper spray, Couture said. The man was taken to hospital to evaluate his mental health and to be treated for the pepper spray. It is too early to say if the man will face charges, Couture said.

CBC was unable to contact the man in the video, and police could not provide an update on his condition.

Man was not aggressive, advocate says

Plouffe said it looks likethe man in the video seemed uncertain about what the officers were going to do to him and that could increase the stress and aggressiveness.

But the main problem, Plouffe explained, is how close the officers were standing to the man.

"In the beginning of the video, the person doesn't behave like an aggressive person. He chats with the officers," Plouffe said.

It's when the officers moved in more closely and began grappling with the man that the situation escalated, Plouffe explained.

There is nobody providing psychological support, Plouffe observed. In Montreal, officers have access to an organization called Urgence psychosociale-justice, which can assist in such situations, he said.

"Maybe they called them, and sometimes they can't go because they are not available," said Plouffe.

It shouldn't be only up to police to intervene in a situation like this, Plouffe said, and it appears the police in the video aren't trained to deal with somebody who is in a state of mental crisis.

Without that training or expert support, they put the man and themselves in danger, Plouffe said.

Montreal police regularly respond to these types of calls, and this is why they need proper support and training, he said.

It was abusive to use pepper spray because the man was not acting aggressively, Plouffe said.

Ways to defuse tensions

There are ways to de-escalate the situation, such as initiating conversation or asking a family member to intervene, Plouffe said.

"Maybe the person could have felt more secure if he sat in his car," Plouffe said, and officers, with proper training, could have negotiated asking him to turn over his keys before getting back into his car.

From there, with the man safely in his car, they could have waited for medical help to arrive, he said.

"He is still a citizen with rights," Plouffe said. "And they cannot treat him like a potentially dangerous creature."

CBC interviewed a witness who arrived on Hutchison near the corner of Van Horne Avenue at around 8:15. CBC agreed to withhold their name out of concern for privacy,

The witness said the man was talking with police for roughly 20 minutes before the situation escalated.

The man did not appear aggressive or threatening, the witness said. Police eventually got him into the ambulance at around 8:50 a.m., the witness said.

Alexandre Popovic is with the Coalition contre la rpression et les abus policiers, a group that fights against police abuse.

After watching the video, Popovic said the man's body language does not appear threatening and he questioned the need to handcuff himat all.

Popovic said the man was not a threat when he was pepper-sprayed and it did not seem to be a necessary intervention. Like Plouffe, he said there are other ways to de-escalate safely rather than resorting to violence.

Better training needed, Niemi says

Fo Niemi, executive director of the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR), encourages the man in the video or his family to file a complaint with the police service's ethics commissioner to see if the pepper spray was used properly.

Using that type of force can escalate a situation and lead to injury or even death, said Niemi, citing the 2014 death of Alain Magloire at the hands of Montreal police.

After an investigation into Magloire's death, Coroner Luc Malouin made a total 14 recommendations in a report that stated: "The tone used by the officers, yelling at Magloire to drop his hammer, was inappropriate. In a situation where someone has mental illness, you have to defuse the situation."

Just this past summer, Marie-Mireille Bence called Repentigny police on a Sunday morning, asking them to bring her son, Jean Ren Junior Olivier, 37, to the hospital because he was having a mental health issue. Olivier later died after police shot him three times in the stomach.

Police should be better trained to handle mental illness and should be accompanied by social workers who can help defuse the situation, Niemi said. In the case of the man being pepper-sprayed, police were called to help somebody in mental distress, he said.

"It required a much different intervention as opposed to four police officers surrounding him and escalating the sense of crisis," he said.