'Quebecois Name' Too Much For Cop
Published by Victor Belleville on 2010-07-29
by JAMIE MCCALLUM
That's one reason a Longueuil police officer gave for pulling over Joel Debellefeuille, 35, in July 2009 in Greenfield Park. It was even written right at the top of the police report.
The officers passed the car, ran the plates and found out the vehicle was registered to a Joel Debellefeuille, according to the report.
Debellefeuille says it was the fourth time in a week he had been pulled over.
The incident "involved a black man who did not initially match the owner of the car," the police report states. "Debellefeuille sounds like a Québécois name and not the name of someone of another origin."
In response to what Debellefeuille is calling "racial profiling," he - along with the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations - has filed complaints with the Quebec Human Rights Commission and the police ethics commissioner.
"It was humiliating," Debellefeuille said. "This is not just for myself but for all visible minorities out there who may experience this sort of humiliation like I did.
"It has got to stop."
Debellefeuille is seeking $30,000 in moral and punitive damages.
When reached on Tuesday, Longueuil police said they will not comment on the case until the commissioner, who receives and examines complaints against the police, drafts a response.
Debellefeuille did not read the police report on the incident until June 1, when he was given a copy because he was contesting one of the tickets he had received.
Four months after being pulled over, he received two tickets by bailiff. The first was for having lapsed car insurance, which he says expired two days before the incident. The second was for refusing to show his identification.
It was the latter that he contested.
He didn't receive tickets any of the other three times he was stopped that week. On those occasions, the police told him they had stopped him because he had a broken light, they were looking for a stolen car, and he had supposedly made an illegal turn.
"I was at my limit with getting pulled over," he said.
"It's ridiculous."
On July 20, 2009, Debellefeuille was driving with his family in his BMW to get ice cream. As he passed a police car going in the opposite direction, he nudged his fiancée, Toni Higgins. "I bet you $100 they follow me," he said to her.
They did just that.
They pulled him over, and Debellefeuille asked the officer why he was being stopped. His response, according to Debellefeuille: "Hey guy, is this your car?"
The officer then asked for Debellefeuille's licence and registration to verify the car belonged to him.
Debellefeuille insisted a supervisor be called before he handed over his documents. When the supervisor arrived, Debellefeuille handed over the requested documents and expressed his frustration at being pulled over.
The supervisor replied he was "lucky that it was (the officer) and not me who stopped you," Debellefeuille said.
In the report, after mentioning the "Québécois name," it states Debellefeuille's car passed a car known to police. The drivers of the two vehicles looked at each other and seemed to know each other, the report said.
The officer also saw a cigarette butt fly out of the car window, which added to the grounds for pulling the car over, according to the report.
"There is no smoking in my car," Debellefeuille said this week.
"I believe they were just fishing and had no idea what to write. They just needed to add something."
In the car with Debellefeuille and Higgins were their daughter Jamie, 15, and two friends.
Jamie had been in the car before when her father was stopped, and Debellefeuille joked she was "getting used to it."
"We were reading the police report and I thought: 'Oh, my God, I can't believe they wrote that!' " Jamie recounted.
"I wasn't being very nice because I was irritated from all the previous times I'd been stopped," Debellefeuille said.
"I didn't think there was a valid reason to pull me over. It's ridiculous that police officers have that right to stop you like that and make you feel like crap, especially in front of your family and friends."
Debellefeuille was adopted as a child. His parents also have a 13-year-old daughter of Chinese descent whose last name is Debellefeuille.
