A Nunavik police officer who had gratuitously assaulted an Aboriginal while asking a colleague to lie to cover him up will finally have a criminal record, so he can say goodbye to his career.
“A high level of probity and integrity is required of police officers, and this gesture [des voies de fait] is not part of it,” judge Jean-Pierre Gervais recently affirmed in sentencing Mathieu Paré, in the locality of Salluit, in Nunavik.
Paré, 28, committed his crimes in May 2019, when he was doing a last shift for the Kativik Regional Police Force before being transferred elsewhere. And to mark the occasion, he had warned his colleague that he wanted “that it brews”, can we read in the judgment.
And when Paré boxed up an Aboriginal man for alleged violent acts, he took advantage of the fact that the latter was sitting in the back of the vehicle and was handcuffed to brake sharply, so that the suspect hit his head against a glass partition.
“Wounded, he is taken to the infirmary where he will be treated”, can we read in the decision.
But if this criminal act can be considered “an error of judgment” by a police officer “who may not have properly assessed the seriousness of the acts committed”, his behavior thereafter was even more serious, noted the magistrate.
obstruction of justice
Because at the time of writing the reports, Paré asked his colleague to lie and say that he had braked because of children in the street.
The police refused, so Paré was charged and then convicted of assault causing bodily harm, but also of obstructing justice.
“If it had not been for the integrity of the constable […] it is likely that these actions would have passed under the radar and would never have been punished, said the judge. Without saying that the first gesture […] is not serious, it is all the same other thing than to try to dodge its responsibility. »
The judge also noted that Paré’s crimes occurred in an Indigenous community where there is a sense of distrust of police officers due to the treatment of First Nations people in the past.
He thus refused to grant absolution to Paré, even if he needed it to remain a policeman, his dream job.
Instead, he gave her 200 hours of community service and two years probation.
Reference-www.journaldemontreal.com