Leading a push for progress in policing

by Claire Loewen

Alain Babineau, BCL/JD’20, discusses his new role with the City of Montreal, and how listening and conflict resolution are key to law enforcement reform.

Alain Babineau has had a unique career, the latest chapter of which has brought him to the City of Montreal, where he serves as an advisor and expert on racial and social profiling. A former police officer with decades of experience, Babineau holds degrees and certificates in criminology, legal studies, conflict resolution, police management and, most recently, BCL/JD diplomas from McGill Law. After 27 years with the RCMP, Babineau began working with the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations in 2016, where he advocated for victims of racial and social profili

ng by police. In his work with the City, Babineau will assist public safety agencies, such as the police and public transportation, in implementing recommendations from a report on systemic racism and discrimination published by Montreal’s public consultation office last year. The report detailed racism and discrimination across municipal institutions, including in public safety agencies.

This means Babineau will be diving head-first into a polarizing debate on the role of public security agencies in la métropole.

“Over the last four years, I’ve been hearing from the community about racial profiling, which is a very important piece,” says Babineau. “The missing voice here is that of law enforcement officers.”

As a Black man, Babineau has had direct experience with racial profiling. He admits to having both practised it and been a victim of it. Now, his job is to prevent it from the ground up. Through conflict resolution training, Babineau developed the ability to mediate difficult situations. At McGill Law, he pushed this skill further, learning to analyze situations from multiple perspectives.

“Law school gives you a different, analytical way of looking at things, where you consider all sides,” says Babineau. “That’s one of the things we’re not always very good at as people, including as law enforcement officers.”

Teaching officers to weigh all sides of a situation in a nuanced manner is key to preventing racial profiling, Babineau believes. That is why he is interested in implementing the Insight Policing method, a conflict resolution-based communication skillset that aims to prevent escalation. It helps police officers get to the root of challenging interactions and to understand the people they are engaging with.

“We don’t do much of that in policing. We don’t really take the time to find out why people are feeling a particular way in a given situation, or why they’re behaving a certain way,” Babineau explains. “That creates problems and leads to situations of conflict that don’t need to happen.”

This behaviour can cause incidents to degenerate into horrific scenarios, he adds.

When it comes to combatting racial profiling, Babineau is more interested in changing legislation than practising law. To him, this means garnering enough public and political support to effect change.

It can take years for complaints and lawsuits to move through the justice system. Even then, justice is not guaranteed. For Babineau, the fact that Derek Chauvin’s trial for the murder of George Floyd occurred just one year after the incident was a rarity and is one example of how public support is an important agent of change.

“We need sustainable changes. You can sanction misbehaviour, but you can’t legislate goodwill,” he concludes. “It has to come from a change in the culture; a change in the mindset.”