Who Is Watching the Watchers? Abisay Cruz, PDQ 39, and the Limits of Scrutiny at the Commission de la sécurité publique

On September 16, the SPVM presented its 2025 annual report to the Commission de la sécurité publique. The session had been postponed from June 22, after allegations of racism at PDQ 39 led to 16 officers being suspended.

What the Commission is, and is not. The Commission is instituted under the law (art. 11 of by-law RCG 06-024) and studies any public-safety question, at the request of the agglomeration council or the executive committee or on its own initiative (art. 3). Its recommendations go to the council, though by resolution it may send confidential recommendations on crime prevention, detection and repression to the executive committee (art. 8). It is a consultative body: it cannot discipline an officer or order a policy change. What it can do is ask questions in public, in front of the people who fund and depend on the police. That makes the quality of its scrutiny the whole point.

Pride, then a narrowed door. Chief Fady Dagher presented the results as among the best in years, citing drops in firearm crime, car theft and arson. He said he could not be prouder of his officers. Citizen Ted Rutland then asked Mr. Dagher whether anyone else had reported acts of violence by PDQ 39 officers in the past. The Commission’s president, Alba Stella Zúñiga Ramos, ruled that this was not the proper forum and that only questions related to the 2026 performance report would be answered. Mr. Rutland pointed out that his question was tied to a specific point in the report. The ruling stood (Commission webcast, Sept. 16, 2026).

That ruling deserves scrutiny. Under article 28 of the Commission’s by-law, every assembly must include a period in which citizens may put an oral question to the Commission on an agenda item or on its activity program. Under article 30, the chair receives each question and either answers it or asks a member, or a person she designates, to answer, orally or in writing. The chair has real powers: she decides incidental matters and points of order (art. 13), and only agenda items may be considered at an assembly (art. 22). She could therefore argue the question fell outside the agenda. But Mr. Rutland tied his question to a specific point in the annual report, which was the agenda item, and article 30 contemplates a reply, even a written one after the meeting. Nothing in it provides for declining to respond.

A death the elected members seemed unaware of. Earlier in the same session, assistant director Marc Charbonneau told the Commission that a memo sent the week before had banned the “hogtie” restraint, a technique neither the SPVM nor the École nationale de police du Québec teaches. That announcement followed a coroner’s report on the death of Abisay Cruz. Yet when Lynda Khelil, spokesperson for the Ligue des droits et libertés, asked Jim Beis, the executive committee member responsible for public safety, for his reflections on that report, he said he was not familiar with it. Ms. Khelil then asked whether any member of the Commission had a reflection. None of the elected officials did. Nobody appeared aware of the situation, and none was willing to weigh in (Commission webcast, Sept. 16, 2026).

The report is not obscure. Coroner Géhane Kamel found that the “hogtied” restraint, in the context of cocaine intoxication, probably contributed to Mr. Cruz’s death. It is a method the École nationale de police du Québec stopped teaching over two decades ago. She also faulted the supervisor’s lack of reaction as Mr. Cruz’s condition deteriorated, and recommended body-worn cameras because police and witness accounts diverged. In March 2026, prosecutors declined to lay charges.

The annual report itself covers 2025, the year Mr. Cruz died. It records 811 police ethics complaints, seven BEI file openings, and three deaths in police shootings. As far as I can find, it never mentions him.

A failure of scrutiny. Because the Commission is advisory, the issue is not that it lacked authority. Scrutiny is the only tool it has, and on this file it went unused. Commissioners are part-time elected officials with a broad mandate, which may partly explain the gap. It does not excuse it. A death in police hands, followed by a coroner’s report naming a banned technique and a supervisor who did not intervene, is exactly what the Commission exists to examine. The SPVM put the ban on the record in the same session. That a member of the public had to raise the underlying report, and that the official responsible for public safety did not know of it, raises fair questions about how prepared the Commission and its political overseers are.

Rogue officers, or a system? The SPVM says the technique is taught neither by the ENPQ nor by itself. Yet nine officers reportedly took part, a supervisor was present, and no one stopped it. The ban came about 17 months after the death and only after the coroner’s report. That points to a gap between what is taught and what is tolerated on the ground.

Which post? No public source I could find identifies the home unit of the nine officers the coroner met. The intervention took place near Pie-IX Boulevard and 47th Street, in the territory of PDQ 30 in Saint-Michel, not PDQ 39 in Montréal-Nord. That is not proof of where the officers were posted, since other units can respond to a call. But it means the Cruz death should not be assumed to belong to the PDQ 39 file. The SPVM and the BEI can answer the question, and the Commission should ask it.

What the Commission should do now. It does not need anyone’s permission to act: article 3 lets it open its own study of the Cruz death and the hogtie practice. It should ask:

If the officers were from PDQ 30 or another unit, the problem extends beyond the post now under scrutiny, and the answers to the Commission’s questions matter more, not less. If they were from PDQ 39, the pattern predates the June suspensions. Either way, a body whose elected members cannot discuss a coroner’s report on a death in police custody is failing the communities that most need it. Civilian oversight requires the overseers to read the file.