By Anthony Fava, Maya Fernandez, & Kane Geng
Content Warning: This case may be distressing and discusses mental health, police violence and anti-Black racism.
Description and Background
At 7:33 a.m. on August 1, 2021, Marie-Mireille Bence called the police seeking assistance because her son Jean René Junior Olivier was experiencing some mental health-related issues. Bence and Oliver are Black residents of Repentigny, a small town in Quebec. According to Bence, her son had told her that he was seeing people around him that wanted to hurt him. Upon arrival, Olivier was outside at the front of his family home reportedly holding a small kitchen knife. His mother was told by police to go inside and lock the door, then after she did so she heard gunshots from outside. Supposedly, Olivier had thrown the knife he was holding on the ground when police arrived and was met with three gunshots to his stomach, killing him. Police however claimed that Olivier was threatening and that they had tried using pepper spray on him, but their attempts were unsuccessful.
This shooting led to outrage by not only the Black community within Repentigny, but also nationwide media coverage. Is it also important to note that the murder of George Flloyd by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota, had happened just over a year before. This event sparked a much greater discussion on racism and police reformation by both the public and the media.
When it came to the coverage itself, the angle that nearly every outlet took was that a young Black male had been wrongfully killed by police. Years earlier this may not have been the case but with the discussion on stories like these changing after 2020, the coverage was much more in favour of both Olivier and his grieving mother who was given a large voice through the stories written regarding her son’s death. One example of this is from an article by CTV News Montreal which quotes, “‘As a mother, I don’t feel my kids are safe. Our kids are not safe, her kids are not safe, look at these young men here, are they safe?’ she argued, referencing family and community members.”1
Adding to this, news outlets also took this opportunity to highlight other racial profiling cases that had taken place in Repentigny. Rather than defending police, journalists instead doubled down by displaying their past failures before the killing of Olivier. In the same CTV News article, it referenced that in one case police deleted a man’s recording of his arrest. Journalists not only showcased the Repentigny police’s troubling police practices, but also how they even went as far as to corrupt evidence.
One year after Olivier was killed, journalists returned to Repentigny to cover protests for change in the community. A protest outside Repentigny’s city hall had two CBC articles written about it.
Olivier’s mother was at their centre of these stories and was given a voice to both discuss the murder of her son, but also what still needs to be done a year later. Journalists also took the opportunity to make audiences aware of other contextual events. In one CBC article, some Black community members were given the chance to talk about their own experiences. “Arlette Yashima, an organizer of the sit-in, says she had her fair share of racial profiling experiences while living in Repentigny for the past two years. She says when she crosses paths with a police car, she knows she ‘will probably be stopped.’”2
The coverage overall of Olivier’s killing was done both respectfully and impactfully for the most part, especially through highlighting his mother’s voice and providing context about other racial injustices within the Repentigny community. The coverage shone a light on the misuse of power that police exercise, highlighting what feminist bell hooks describes as “dominator culture.”
Journalist and activist Desmond Cole elaborates on this concept when he writes, “whiteness is an unimpeachable rubber that deflects collective human failing. Nothing sticks to whiteness. Blackness is the glue, and every negative thing that gets hurled at it sticks”3.
By highlighting the dominator culture exercised by police within the journalistic pieces about Olivier’s killing, journalists were not only able to cover the wrongful death of a Black Quebec resident, but also show that Canadian policing is beyond flawed in its treatment of Black communities.
Discussion Questions
- Can journalists make real change in situations like these or is it completely up to police and government officials?
- What role does context play in reporting about Black communities?
Endnotes
1 Angela MacKenzie and Rachel Lau, “’Instead of Getting Help, He Got Three Bullets’: Family of Man Killed in Repentigny Demand Answers,” CTV News (CTV News , 2021), https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/instead-of-getting-help-he-got-three-bullets-family-of-man-killed-in-repentigny-demand-answers-1.5531728.
2 Holly Cabrera, “’Screaming for Change’: Repentigny, Que. Residents Demand Action on Racial Profiling at Sit-In,” CBC News (CBC, 2022), https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/sit-in-repentigny-police-shot-black-man-1.6538532?fbclid=IwAR1NwQmBzV3A4C_-sm58DDB0P52r-72bMukRfJdn1MPSKTH_n7As-nVBAm8.
3 Desmond Cole, “Negro Frolicks (January),” in The Skin We’re in: A Year of Black Resistance and Power (Doubleday Canada, 2020), pp. 1-17.
4 “Toronto For All,” City of Toronto, 2022, https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/get-involved/community/toronto-for-all/.
5 “Toronto For All”
6 “Toronto For All,” City of Toronto, 2022, https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/get-involved/community/toronto-for-all/.
7 Desmond Cole, “Direct action,” in The Skin We’re in: A Year of Black Resistance and Power (Doubleday Canada, 2020), pp. 61-78.
8 “Anti-Black Racism & Mental Health,” City of Toronto, 2022, https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/get-involved/community/toronto-for-all/anti-black-racism-mental-health/.