Quebec tribunal says jail violated rights of Black man left naked in cell for hours | iNFOnews | Thompson-Okanagan's News Source
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Quebec tribunal says jail violated rights of Black man left naked in cell for hours

The yard of the Orsainville Detention Centre, near Quebec City, is shown on June 7, 2014. Quebec's human rights tribunal has found that provincial jail guards violated the rights of a Black inmate who was left for hours naked and wet in a cell without a mattress. Judge Christian Brunelle has ordered the provincial government and several guards at a Quebec City jail to pay Samuel Toussaint a total of $41,500 in damages and ordered the province's public security department to create a plan to fight discriminatory profiling.
Image Credit: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Francis Vachon

Quebec's human rights tribunal has found that provincial jail guards violated the rights of a Black inmate who was left for hours naked and wet in a cell without a mattress.

In a Nov. 3 decision, Judge Christian Brunelle ordered the provincial government and several guards at a Quebec City jail to pay Samuel Toussaint a total of $41,500 in damages and ordered the Public Security Department to create a plan to fight discriminatory profiling.

Toussaint, who was 21 at the time of the 2016 incident, was serving an intermittent sentence on weekends.

The tribunal says that he flicked a cigarette toward a guard who had told him to stop smoking in the parking lot, resulting in a series of escalating interventions by jail staff.

Brunnelle says guards found Toussaint unco-operative and cut his clothes off with a knife, moved him around the jail while he was naked, and didn't follow decontamination procedures after they pepper-sprayed him.

The judge says the behaviour of the guards — at least one of whom uttered a racial slur toward Toussaint — suggests the inmate was racially profiled.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2023.

News from © The Canadian Press, 2023
The Canadian Press

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