Police Violently Raided a Black Montrealer's Party at Gunpoint by Mistake, Man Alleges

(Excerpt from vice.com)

A young Black Montrealer has filed a complaint against Montreal police after he alleges several officers stormed into his apartment during a Super Bowl party, slammed him to the ground, and held him and his friends at gunpoint in an apparent case of mistaken identity.

Taylor Zamor, 30, said the resulting injuries have left him in pain, distressed, and unable to work. He is considering legal action. In his formal complaint to the SVPM, filed from his hospital bed, he describes the emotional toll from the officers’ conduct as “severe.”

According to Zamor, at about 8:30 p.m. February 2, just after the halftime show had ended, there was a loud knock on the door of his Côte-des-Neiges-neighbourhood apartment. His roommate, who was smoking downstairs, had just called him to warn that police were entering the building in search of two Black men accused of a stabbing nearby. 

After Zamor answered the door following a second, more aggressive bang, Zamor alleges a team of five police officers from the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SVPM) swarmed the apartment with their firearms raised.

“I asked them to identify themselves and explain what was going on, but that’s when I was slammed to the ground,” said Zamor, who immigrated from Haiti when he was young.

Zamor had a dozen friends over who witnessed the events. VICE spoke to three of them, and they corroborated his account. Montreal police refused to comment on the incident, saying they could not comment on specific cases and it was confidential.

Read the full story here.