Terrebonne police slow to investigate incident against Black girls, Red Coalition alleges

By Gareth Madoc-Jones, Posted December 27, 2023 5:35 pm.

A group of young Black women is accusing police in Terrebonne, north of Montreal, of racism after officers allegedly took weeks to investigate an incident against them.
The night of Nov. 21, a hooded white man allegedly approached the three young adult women and a minor in a vehicle and uttered death threats and racial slurs, and shattered their car window with an axe.
Anti-racism group Red Coalition described the alleged incident as “reminiscent of a racist 1950s southern U.S. town.”
Lyndia Barthold, the mother of 18-year-old Destiny, who was in the car, reported the incident to Terrebonne police that evening. She says it was only until the Red Coalition became involved that the victims were contacted by an investigator — on Dec. 11, just under three weeks later.
“It’s not like they have so much things going on that they couldn’t like assign an investigator right away on such a situation,” Barthold said at a press conference with Red Coalition Wednesday morning. “Those are not things that happen every day in Terrebonne.
“They finally put a investigator on the on the file like three weeks later, which means we could’ve been dead.”
Alain Babineau, the director of racial profiling and public Security at the Red Coalition, says it’s not normal that police weren’t immediately in contact with Barthold.
“Somebody reports that they’ve nearly escaped being killed by someone yielding an axe and a knife, you get an automatic response from the police, that’s automatic,” Babineau said. “And particularly if the person tells you that the person in the neighbourhood is still around. So, there’s an immediate response. That’s number one that didn’t happen.
“The next move would be to identify a subject of the allegations and certainly have a conversation with the individual. That at very least should’ve happened that night, from my perspective, as a police officer.”
Red Coalition says police identified one of the Barthold’s neighbours one month after the alleged incident and charged the 51-year-old with assault with a deadly weapon, death threats and mischief.
Destiny, who was left shaken, says things haven’t been the same since that November night.
“I’ve been feeling really depressed, really sad,” she said. “I haven’t been feeling myself. I just want justice for me and my friends. I want this to be over. And for everything to go back to normal.”
Barthold calls the entire situation “very overwhelming.”
“This is a situation that caused me tears every second that I think about it, every time,” she said.
CityNews reached out to Terrebonne police for comment but did not immediately hear back.
The Red Coalition is planning to file a complaint with Quebec’s police ethics commissioner.
“We have to call it like it is: anti-Black hate crime,” said Babineau. “I repeat, anti-Black hate crime committed in Terrebonne on Nov. 21. The ways in which the police responded in this matter also needs to be denounced and held to account.”