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But Basora’s lawyer, Fernando Belton, isn’t buying it.
“Did they intercept every person in Villeray who has a red North Face coat, which by the way is a very popular coat among young people?”
Belton is calling what happened to Basora a case of racial profiling by the police, which is all too common for young men like Basora.
“When we talk about racial profiling files, there are never racist statements or gestures that can be qualified as discriminatory,” he said, adding that instead, it’s a series of covert elements that when added together, point to nothing else.
“Does it smell like profiling or not? In a case like this, well, it smells strong,” he said.
Incidents of racial profiling are well-documented within the SPVM, and in July 2020, the force released a new policy on street checks that aimed to put an end to disparities in who is stopped — though critics were quick to voice their dissatisfaction with it. The policy came almost a year after a 2019 report found that people of colour are far more likely to be stopped by SPVM officers than white people.
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