FINES FOR THE DISENFRANCHISED

Ticket Him When He's Down

A neighbour introduced Jean-Sebastien to cocaine.

The then 25-year-old bike messenger became an addict. Paranoid and
ashamed, he left Montreal and his job for Toronto, where he learned
how to squeegee and survive on the street. For four years
Jean-Sebastien lived on the streets of Toronto and Montreal, trading
his cocaine habit along the way for an addiction to crack cocaine.

Not long after Jean-Sebastien started squeegeeing, laws were passed
and police started giving out tickets. "I didn't pay attention," he
says. "I was on the street. Why give me tickets when I'm trying to
survive instead of stealing and killing?"

Community groups working with society's most vulnerable in Montreal
want to know whether the rash of tickets being doled out to homeless
and marginalized people amounts to discrimination. To prove the city
is criminalizing homelessness, the groups spent a year and a half
collecting hundreds of tickets issued to homeless and marginalized
youth for "petty crimes" like jaywalking, tossing a cigarette on the
ground or sitting on a concrete block in a park. Last fall, the Reseau
d'aide aux personnes seules et itinerantes de Montreal (RAPSIM) and
the Table de concertation jeunesse/itinerance du centre-ville asked
the Quebec Human and Youth Rights Commission to hold public
consultations. Whether that will happen is a decision that will be
made by mid-February at the latest.

"Discrimination is alive and well in Montreal," says Table
spokesperson and Cactus Montreal staffer Roxane Beauchemin. Unable to
pay the tickets they are given, some youths end up at Bordeaux Prison
- - "the school for criminals" as Beauchemin calls it. And that messes
up their progress, since jail time means a loss of access to social
services like drug rehab, housing and the job programs meant to get
them on their feet. Lost too are friends and a sense of belonging.
Going to jail makes them feel more defiant toward police, and, worst
of all, some find a new sense of belonging at Bordeaux, where
organized crime gangs look for new recruits, says Beauchemin.

According to a police report, last summer officers in the Ville-Marie
borough handed out some 600 tickets to homeless youth and squeegee
kids despite Station 21 having had two officers assigned to educating
people about the consequences of breaking laws.

"Police are there to apply the law and bylaws," says Johanne Paquin, a
commander at the Montreal Police Service's "Op South." The new
approach, based on prevention, education and enforcement, includes
warnings before tickets: People receive tickets only when caught a
second time. The third time around police will seize the tool used to
commit the infraction - for instance, squeegee punks would lose their
squeegees. Arrest is a last resort, Paquin insists.

ooo

While in Toronto, Jean-Sebastien met a girl he'd known on the street
in Montreal and fell in love. The couple moved back to Montreal and
Jean-Sebastien vowed he'd get them both off crack. One night, a police
officer caught the couple smoking in an alley. "He didn't search
[us]," Jean-Sebastien says. "All he wanted to do was give us a talk.
By telling me 'you're worth more than that, I can tell you're smarter
than that' he built up my self-esteem. That's when I decided we're
getting off the street."

The relationship didn't last, but it produced a child, an 18-month-old
son of whom Jean-Sebastien has custody. Now clean and in school
finishing Grade 9 before heading for vocational training,
Jean-Sebastien never imagined the tickets would come back to haunt
him.

Last August, a bailiff knocked on his dad's door. "They wanted to
seize everything," Jean-Sebastien says. He asked to do community
service, but Montreal municipal court officials wouldn't wait for him
to finish school, he says. No one told him he could fight the tickets
in court. They were knocked down from $5,000 to just over $3,200, and
he was ordered to sign a repayment agreement for $50 a month.

"I find it ridiculous, and it's kind of hard for the baby," he says.
Jean-Sebastien is battling other demons: During his time on the street
he says he became suicidal, and a hospital psychiatrist labelled him a
paranoid schizophrenic. While he fights to get that label removed, he
is seeing a psychologist, a psychiatrist and two social workers.

ooo

Public consultations don't happen often, says Robert Sylvestre, the
human rights commission's spokesperson. Reserved for "matters of great
importance," in the last 20 to 25 years the commission has held public
consultations only a few times: Once on racism in the taxi business,
another on relations between police and racial minorities, and a third
on violence against gays and lesbians, Sylvestre says.

Consultations aren't about blame, he says. "Sometimes you have to
check out an entire system," Sylvestre explains.

In the end, the commission only makes recommendations, Sylvestre says.
But he stresses, "In the three big inquiries of [public] consultation,
these recommendations brought forward many changes."

Horror stories like Jean-Sebastien's are common enough, but they anger
downtown independent city councillor Louise O'Sullivan, who until she
quit Mayor Tremblay's party was the city's executive committee member
for social services. "Sometimes you don't have to break the rules, but
bend the rules a little," she says. "We have to shepherd [homeless
youth]. They often have psychological problems and [drug] dependency
problems. We need to create programs to help keep them off the street."

O'Sullivan says she'll table a social services plan for dealing with
street gangs and incivilities at next week's Ville-Marie borough
council meeting.

For her part, Commander Paquin thinks that what's needed is a team
made up of police, street workers and social workers ready to
intervene. "It takes people in the field who share the same goal and
vision," she says.