Racism at the SPVM: Sixteen Station 39 Officers Under Scrutiny, an Entire Team Dismantled

On the evening of Friday, June 12, 2026, the SPVM chief called an emergency news conference to announce that an entire team of Montreal North patrol officers had been dismantled. Two officers suspended, the file referred to the DPCP, fourteen others reassigned. Beyond the shock, one question remains: bad apples, or a rotten barrel?

I — The facts

What happened at Station 39

It was around 9 p.m. on Friday, June 12, when senior officials of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) arrived at neighbourhood Station 39, in Montreal North, to relieve an entire night patrol team of duty until further notice. A few hours later, Chief Fady Dagher called an emergency news conference to announce what he himself described as an unprecedented event: the complete dismantling of a police shift suspected of racist conduct.

According to reports by La Presse and Radio-Canada, members of the team allegedly targeted Black people and people of Arab descent abusively during stops, and made disparaging, racially tinged remarks. The hardest detail to stomach: officers allegedly cut the hair of men they had apprehended and kept it, like war trophies. Chief Dagher confirmed that these acts are « part of the allegations. » All the officers involved have had their service weapons removed.

II — The numbers

How many officers, exactly?

Media coverage has circulated several figures — 2, 14, 16, « about fifteen » — to the point of sowing confusion. Yet they all describe the same group.

For now, the file referred to the DPCP concerns a single incident, but the SPVM has stated that checks into other episodes are under way. Most of the officers involved are young men with, on average, three or four years of service — fewer than five, according to Radio-Canada; two women are among the group.

III — The origin

A complaint from within

The most striking feature of this affair lies in its origin. Neither citizen complaints nor a viral video triggered the intervention: it was other officers at Station 39 who reported their colleagues on the night shift. The investigation began in March, based on internal information. It was on Thursday at noon, however, that the SPVM gathered enough evidence to refer the matter to the DPCP and, the following evening, to proceed with the dismantling.

The Deputy Premier and Minister of Public Security, Ian Lafrenière, stressed one point: what « reassures » him is that the complaint came from within police ranks themselves. An optimistic reading — one our contributor, for his part, urges caution about.

The chief, who has made the fight against racial profiling his signature since taking office in 2022, does not hide the ordeal ahead. He anticipates a difficult period and heightened public mistrust, and warns: this is probably not the end — more cases could follow.

IV — The context

The weight of Montreal North

Station 39 is no ordinary station. It covers the area where, in 2008, 18-year-old Fredy Villanueva was killed during a police intervention that escalated, triggering riots and a public coroner’s inquest. The death of Jean-Pierre Bony in 2016 revived those tensions in the same borough. For nearly two decades, the SPVM has multiplied community-outreach initiatives there. It is precisely in this neighbourhood — one of the most multi-ethnic in the metropolis — that the current allegations surface, barely three months after Mr. Dagher unveiled his five-year plan against systemic racism.

But the unease extends well beyond Station 39 alone. In March 2025, the death of 29-year-old Abisay Cruz during a police intervention in the Saint-Michel neighbourhood sparked several protests against police brutality. It is this continuum — from one end of Montreal to the other — that our contributor Alain Babineau places at the heart of his reading of events.

Politically, the response converged within hours on a single tool: Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada and Minister Lafrenière announced their intention to speed up the rollout of body cameras at the SPVM, a file opened and then shelved since the 2016–2017 pilot project. This is where Alain Babineau comes in — a jurist, former RCMP staff sergeant, and director of racial profiling and public safety at the Red Coalition — who has been calling for this measure, and much more, for years.

For Babineau, the Station 39 affair is not an anomaly but a symptom: the culmination of forty years of documented institutional racism at the SPVM, from the 1965 Springate survey to the Service’s own data, by way of repeated warnings from its own Black officers. He credits Chief Dagher’s move — unprecedented, in his view — while refusing to see it as reform. His argument, too dense to fit in this article, is the subject of a separate op-ed we are publishing alongside, which you can also download in full below.

V — The law

What the law says — and what remains to be decided

Mr. Babineau’s argument rests on a real legal foundation, which is worth clarifying for the reader — because the file is not closed, and a nuance is in order regarding the basis of the ruling he cites.

VI — The debate

Bad apples or a rotten barrel?

This is the fault line running through the whole affair. On one side, authorities who see the internal complaint as proof that the safeguards finally worked: « what reassures me is that it was police officers themselves who reported these acts, » said Minister Lafrenière. On the other, voices like Mr. Babineau’s, for whom a belated detection, triggered internally, cannot stand in for structural reform.

Between the two, the facts: a criminal investigation under way, two officers suspended, a community that has been demanding accountability since 2008, and a racial-profiling case awaiting its outcome in Ottawa. Friday evening’s news conference did not settle the debate. It brought it back to the front page.