by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Bernard St-Jacques figures that in Montreal there’s one law for the rich and another for those who sleep in parks. Now he’s assembling proof. Since June the community organizer for the homeless-aid group Réseau d’aide aux personnes seules et itinérantes de Montréal (RAPSIM)—with the help of 27 other similar groups—has been compiling information on the tickets collected by his marginal clientele.

“These people are in the habit of tossing tickets out,” he says. “They’re not used to having us collect the tickets, fill out forms to detail the experience and have us ask them questions about what they went through. We’ve collected and centralized them and we’re preparing them for analysis.”

Some of the results are in. “One person got a ticket for washing his hair by using a public drinking fountain, another was ticketed for sitting atop a picnic table with feet on the bench. Those two fall under a bylaw called Misuse of City Property,” says St-Jacques. “One got a ticket for using two spaces on a park bench, another for spitting, then there’s loitering and crossing the street too slowly. Plus there were littering tickets given to people tossing cigarette butts on the ground. One even got a littering ticket for flicking his ash on the ground.”

Tip of the iceberg

Every year the city doles out thousands of tickets based on the cornucopia of city and borough bylaws. But behind those totals lie countless tales of persecution of those less fortunate, St-Jacques asserts. “When you look at statistics they never divulge the social class or background or profession of those involved. But how many people like you and me get tickets for spitting?”

St-Jacques says that such selective enforcement could eventually be fought over in court. “We’d eventually like to challenge these bylaws as unconstitutional because they’re applied in a very targeted manner against marginals,” he says.

The most commonly used tool against the no-money set is the curfew law, which has been employed to excess since a riot at the Carré St-Louis in June 2001. “Once they’re out of parks, these people often have nowhere to go,” he says. “This summer we noticed an enormous amount of police intimidation in these public spaces, which are rapidly disappearing as places where these people can go.”

A marginal who gets a ticket will often toss it out, a habit that can lead to jail time, thus further quashing their hopes of a return to the mainstream. “Along with mental health, drug addiction and whatever other problems, if you add a big heavy police record, that becomes just as big an obstacle to reintegration as those others elements.”

Sex, garbage and loitering

Last year Montreal’s police showed their knowledge of our many laws by handing out a wide variety of exotic tickets. Three were charged under Article 174, being naked and exposing oneself to public view from a private property. “Committing an indecent act in a public place with the intention to insult or offend” was one of those lesser-known bylaws, known as 173 (1)b, that led cops to swoop down on 157 people in this city last year. Hookers and johns between them added up to 565 accusations of soliciting for sexual purposes, an offence under Article 213, while five others were nailed for stopping a car for the purposes of soliciting sexual services. Nine were ticketed for having more than two dogs in a home.

Tickets were mailed out to 1,697 people for putting out their garbage incorrectly, while 224 tickets were written out for selling stuff on the street (those dealing newspapers or stuff like free religious texts are exempt from the bylaw). And, in 2001 in the former City of Montreal, 1,149 tickets were issued for loitering, costing offenders $138 a pop.

Jaywalking under siege

Perhaps most surprisingly, the city that has a reputation as a happy haven for jaywalkers also doles out no shortage of tickets to pedestrians who cross on reds. In 2001, tickets were written to 590 island pedestrians who crossed the street at a spot other than the intersection, a violation of code P044. Cops gave tickets to 513 other city strollers for walking through a red light (P046). Altogether 1,587 tickets were given out for walking infractions.

“Certainly it’s reasonable to issue tickets for people crossing on red traffic lights. We could easily give 200,000 of those out a year,” says Montreal traffic czar Jeremy Searle. But he questions both the motives behind those tickets being issued and the ticketing of the 217 who were nailed in 2001 for disobeying the signage of the white-silhouette-red-hand pedestrian crossing lights. Searle, who has conducted a campaign for pedestrian safety, considers the pedestrian lights confusing. “They’re a campaign to try to endanger pedestrians and force them to cross on red lights.”

Searle believes that separate lights for pedestrians leads to confusion and makes motorists believe they’re allowed to aggressively accelerate in front of pedestrians while the light remains green but the red hand appears.

“The white is rinky-dink. It’s been allowed here by province, but worldwide people know that you cross on a green light, that’s what we teach children,” he says. “But when the authorities are trying to confuse the population, it becomes more questionable to ticket them for crossing at these lights.”

Searle says he doesn’t know where or to whom the tickets were issued, but others have an idea.

Street cleaning

“Over the last month alone, police have threatened to ticket me for loitering three times when I intervened in a police situation as an observer,” says police watchdog Mouvement Action Justice head Yves Manseau. “I watch downtown closely from my office, and it’s not just the quantity of tickets, it’s that they’re targeted at people who are thought to be bothering the peace.”

Manseau says that your chances of getting ticketed rise in inverse proportion to your wealth. “They’re not given to Mr.-and-Mrs.-Everybody,” says Manseau. “It’s clear that, systematically, the police are encouraged to use the panoply of bylaws and highway code infractions to get marginals—the squeegees, itinerants and drunks—off the street. It’s a troubling phenomenon in a free society.”

The discretionary use of bylaws as a means of social control is evident outside of metro stations where supposed gang members are given trouble, says Manseau. He quips that he doesn’t have to worry about jaywalking tickets because “I’m older now and I wait for red lights because I need the rest. But if they want to make good citizens, it’s not through repression that it will happen. They should try to sensitize people rather than have a threat over our heads.”