Montreal’s police service fired seven officers this week over allegations of racist and discriminatory conduct, including that officers at the Montreal North station cut the hair of racialized residents and kept it as trophies. The firings are rare. What they do not yet include is a single criminal charge.
Five of the seven worked at Station 39 in Montreal North, a borough with a large Black population where Black and Arab residents reported discriminatory treatment. Two worked at Station 21 downtown. Six had already been suspended. All seven turned in their guns and badges, Chief Fady Dagher said.
“It’s a sad day but at the same time it was needed,” Dagher said. “It was necessary to keep the trust with the police and the community.”
The case at Station 39 began in March, when the force received internal complaints about alleged racism and criminal misconduct. In June, police dismantled a 16-officer night patrol unit at the station on June 13 and removed those officers from patrol. Fourteen other Station 39 officers were reassigned to jobs with no public contact. The allegations, including the hair trophies, became public in mid-June, and residents marched in Montreal North under the banner “enough is enough.”
The Station 21 allegations are separate. One officer is accused of urinating on a homeless person while in uniform, and another of posing for mocking photos with people he had arrested. A Station 39 officer is also accused of deleting a phone’s evidence in a 2025 domestic violence case. Police have sent all the files to Quebec’s Crown prosecution office, which will decide whether to lay charges. Dagher has called the evidence “strong.” None of the seven has been charged, and the allegations have not been tested in court.
Community advocates are not treating the dismissals as the end. Daniele-Jocelyne Otou of the Black Healing Centre told Global News: “There’s transparency, which they’re great at as part of their PR, but then there’s also accountability.” Human rights advocate Ricardo Lamour called the response “a push to control the narrative at all costs.” Community groups are demanding a public inquiry, and researchers say the focus on individual officers leaves supervisors and the structure of the unit untouched.
The Montreal Police Brotherhood, the union, says it will challenge the firings and calls the process used “unprecedented.” That is the usual second act: arbitrators have reinstated fired officers before, and a union fight can drag on for years while residents wait.
The department deserves credit for acting faster than most. But a night unit does not operate without a sergeant, a lieutenant and a commander who signed off on its work, and residents who say they were targeted have yet to hear whether anyone above the seven will answer for it. A public inquiry is the way to find out. The Crown’s decision on charges is the next test, and it should come with a date.
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