Classified beating

The January 10 pummeling of Winston Roberts, an 18-year-old black man, by six metro cops at the Villa Maria station has opened up a controversy over how suspected subway criminals are being classified. According to activist group Black Youth in Action (BYIA), metro police use different classification codes to identify the race of alleged troublemakers. Dossiers on blacks, for instance, are given a delta code, a practice many black leaders find both repulsive and dangerous.

“First, we wonder why we need to classify people based on race,” says Peter Flegel, BYIA’s co-chairman. “We feel it reinforces preconceptions based on race and creates an atmosphere where race plays a role in dealing with individuals. Second, it is not an appropriate system to classify criminals—why not hair colour or age? Why use race?”
The group, which held a press conference on Sunday denouncing both racism and police brutality, are calling for a public inquiry to look into the officers’ behaviour and the classification system. Flegel also says BYIA has been in touch with lawyers and is considering a lawsuit for “moral, exemplary and material damages.”

Flegel says his group only learned of the incident after a witness approached them a week later, and BYIA conducted its own investigation into the incident. He forwarded the findings to the city, which contacted the Montreal Transit Corporation. They are asking for a police investigation into the matter, and have forwarded the cops both the security guards’ report and the surveillance tape. :

—Patrick Lejtenyi