Press groups are calling for an investigation after Montreal police allegedly beat a freelance journalist while he was covering an anti-AI protest in the city’s downtown last week.
William Wilson says he’s still recovering from the incident, which left him concussed and in the emergency room.
That day, he says he was pepper-sprayed, then kicked and punched while on the ground, all while wearing his media accreditation and identifying himself as a journalist, camera in hand.
“I think there’s something psychotic about pushing someone to the ground and beating them on the ground when they’re not a threat to you,” he said.
“I would like to see justice for what occurred to me.”
Demonstrators had gathered near where the artificial intelligence summit, All In, was taking place at the Palais des congrès on Sept. 16 around 4:30 p.m. Wilson says police started attacking them and the journalists present after someone threw down a metal barrier.
In a statement posted to Facebook, the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) says their intervention began after they arrested someone for armed assault. They say someone then threw a projectile in their direction.
Wilson says he was following police directives as they tried to disperse the crowd, but was still pepper-sprayed in the face “point blank for absolutely no reason.”
That’s when, he says, he started running away, albeit with a limp.
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As he reached Ste-Catherine Street, he says he stumbled and hit a concrete planter, after which an officer pushed him to the ground. But not before addressing him by name, Wilson says, adding the two had interacted in the past.
“He indicated to me that he was about to whack me with his baton and I flinched. And at that point he kind of chuckled and said, ‘Will, you’re learning.'”
“So that suggested to me that not only does this guy know exactly who I am, but he targeted me specifically because of the work that I do.”
He says a barrage of kicks and punches ensued, punctuated by a baton whack to the face — after Wilson had identified himself as a journalist.
“I was just kind of screaming and in a terror.”
A medical report reviewed by CBC News shows Wilson walked away from the incident with bruising to his face, neck, spine, pelvis, hip and arms, as well as with a light concussion. The report suggests he was a victim of a criminal act.
The publication that hired Wilson, The Rover, has since published an open letter, addressed to Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada and Domestic Security Minister Ian Lafrenière, demanding an investigation into the police’s riot squad.
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In their statement, Montreal police say some of their interventions at the protest were posted on social media, adding they are “fully aware of the situation” and are monitoring it closely.
Where alleged incidents involving journalists are concerned, they wrote the following:
“Measures were taken as soon as the situation was observed on the ground by the supervising officer on the very evening of the demonstration.”
The SPVM adds that Wilson’s case is being monitored and has been referred to its professional standards office.
The Rover’s letter was co-signed by 76 other people, including the president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, Brent Jolly.
In an interview with CBC, Jolly says there needs to be accountability.
“If I were to editorialize, I would call it shocking and thoroughly disappointing for a professional police service to be behaving in this way, particularly against individuals who identified themselves as journalists, not as protesters,” he said.
Wilson, who has been covering protests in Montreal for over a decade, says the incident is part of what he calls an “epidemic” of maltreatment by police at demonstrations.
“I think journalists have been treated worse and worse by the SPVM,” he says.
Christopher Curtis, The Rover’s editor-in-chief, says he wasn’t surprised by the alleged beating, saying this was the fourth time something like this had happened to Wilson — and that another journalist who was at the scene that day, Isaac Peltz, had also experienced similar beatings.
“I was scared for my friend,” said Curtis.
“The mayor, the minister of public security, you know, the onus falls on them to prove to us that the police can be held accountable for their actions.”
In a statement to CBC, the mayor’s office said it values the freedom of the press, calling the allegations “serious” and deserving of “rigorous” examination. It says it would not comment further, pending the findings by authorities looking into the matter.
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Almost a week since the protest, Wilson says he still has trouble writing, reading and speaking, and is concerned about the long-term consequences of the concussion.
Though he’s come out of the demonstration shaken, he’s still determined, he says.
“Whenever incidents like this occur, when I am targeted as a journalist, it just makes me want to redouble my efforts to tell these stories and to do the work that I’ve been doing for 11 years.”
