A woman in Montréal-Nord called 911 in 2025 to report domestic violence and opened her phone to show police the videos. According to Montreal police, an officer from Station 39 who arrived at her door then deleted the evidence from her phone.
The officer is now under criminal investigation for breach of trust and obstruction of justice, the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) said this week. He was moved to administrative duties with no public contact in September.
Station 39 is the same station where 16 officers have been under investigation since June over allegations of racist conduct toward Black and Arab residents, including cutting men’s hair to keep as trophies. Four officers were suspended over those allegations by late August. Nothing reported so far ties the deleted video to race. But it surfaced because of that investigation, and it raises a second question about how the station handled the people it was supposed to protect.
What the outlets agree on: the officer recognized the woman’s partner, the suspected aggressor, when he arrived, and then erased photos and videos from her phone. His partner on the call, a female officer, reported what she saw to supervisors. Radio-Canada reported that two sergeants did not intervene and were later transferred within the SPVM. The SPVM has not detailed what, if anything, the sergeants did after the report.
The woman’s name has not been published. The reporting does not say what became of the complaint she made, or whether her partner faced any charge.
Quebec’s public security minister, Guy Jr Lapointe, said that if the newly alleged facts are proven, the situation is extremely concerning.
The SPVM also disclosed a second case tied to the Station 39 inquiry: an officer at Station 21, downtown, has been suspended for several weeks over possible racist and discriminatory acts. The force is in contact with the Crown prosecutors’ office (DPCP) on next steps. Station 21 is also under scrutiny for a separate episode in which an officer allegedly urinated on a homeless person.
The deleted-video allegation is not proven. No charge has been laid, and the officer has not been convicted of anything.
What happens next sits with the SPVM’s professional standards division, which is running the criminal inquiry, and with the DPCP, which decides whether anyone is charged. A province-appointed independent observer, Anne-Marie Boisvert, has been overseeing the wider Station 39 investigation since the summer.
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