Jaywalking while black? West Island man 'humiliated' by settlement

CTV Montreal: Jaywalking while black Marcus Gordon is upset about a five-year wait for a $2,000 award

A West Island man says he has been ‘humiliated’ by the Quebec Human Rights Commission’s settlement in an incident of racial profiling.

The commission recommended the City of Montreal pay him a settlement of $2,000 after he was stopped for jaywalking.

On Tuesday, the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations argued that a decade ago that settlement would have been $10,000.

The complainant, Marcus Gordon is upset about the settlement and said it sends a bad message to Quebecers that it’s not worth filing a complaint.

The incident occurred in May 2011, when Gordon and his fiancée were leaving the Metropolis theatre following a benefit concert for murdered local hip-hop artist Bad News Brown.

"Only me and my girlfriend got pulled over by three officers. Not one, not two, but three with gloves," said Gordon.

Video of the incident showed several white people also jaywalking, but police didn’t stop any of them.

He was expecting a settlement in the vicinity of $10,000, which according to CRARR is the jurisprudence for this type of incident, but only received $2,000 – and it took five years to receive it.

“It sets a new low for racial profiling cases and it’s going to send a very counter-productive message, not only to victims of racial profiling, most of whom are black… but also to all victims of racism. When the go to the Human Rights Commission, especially if it takes them five years to come up with this low amount of damages, they may as well just go straight to small claims court,” said CRARR director Fo Niemi.

Gordon he said this isn’t the first time he’d been racially profiled, adding that he has complained to the Human Rights Commission in the past and has also won judgments in his favour.

Both CRARR and Gordon have written letters to the Human Rights Commission seeking a higher settlement, however the Human Rights Commission will not comment on the case.