Montreal police investigating after officer caught on camera shoving man in Chinatown
CBC
Montreal police have launched an internal investigation after a video began circulating on social media showing an officer violently shoving a man to the ground in a Chinatown alleyway.
A spokesperson for the police said the service's Direction de l'intégrité et des normes professionnelles will be overseeing the investigation.
CBC News spoke with the person who caught the incident on video Thursday, filming it at around lunchtime in the alley between St-Urbain and Clark streets.
The police were approaching people in the alley and appeared to be searching them, said the witness, whom CBC has agreed to not identify.
Most of the people being searched were compliant, but it was when the officers approached a man in a makeshift shelter constructed of a couple of pallets that things got heated, the witness said.
One officer appeared to pull a supporting plank from the shelter in a way that caused a portion of the structure to fall on the man, the witness said. The move appeared to be intentional, and the man was then touching his head and looking at his hand as if checking for blood, the witness said.
The man became upset and was yelling, but the police were pushing him repeatedly and attempting to chase him away, the witness said.
At one point, the witness captured the man being pushed down while he was walking away. He slammed into a concrete barrier. In the video, it is impossible to hear what is being said between the officers and man.
The man was in his socks and "trying to get his shoes," the witness said, which were at the now destroyed pallet shelter.
He also could have been trying to get other belongings because "I don't know what else he had in that hut," the witness said.
At one point, the man appeared to run around to the other side of the alley in an attempt to access the shelter from another angle, but the officers again chased him away, the witness said. One officer threatened the man with his club, the witness said.
Sam Watts, CEO of the Welcome Hall Mission, said the video is surprising but he said in every profession there are people who behave in an uncharacteristic way.
"We know that a lot of steps have been taken to try to improve but that doesn't mean the improvement is at 100 per cent," said Watts, and this video sends the message that there are still steps to take.
"This is not the way to respond to people who are in precarious situations. We need to do better."
This story was first published on Oct. 20, 2025.
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