Section 173(1) makes illegal the willful performance of “an indecent act in a public place in the presence of one or more persons, or in any place with intent to insult or offend any person.” Section 173(1) takes after its now repealed predecessor, section 157, 8 which prohibited acts of “gross indecency” and was almost exclusively used for the purposes of persecuting homosexuals.
In an underhanded attempt to mask the homophobic nature of their repressive operations, Longueuil police have started using a seemingly mundane municipal by-law to crack down on men having sex with men in public spaces.Īccusations under section 173(1) of the Canadian Criminal CodeĬurrently, Section 173(1) is the most common accusation being made against gay men in the province of Quebec.
Criminal code accusations are not the only tactics currently being used by cops to harass men who have sex with men. For reasons that will be explained below, police services in this province tend to make use of sections 173(1) 6 and 271(1) 7 of the Canadian Criminal Code when hunting down men who have sex with men. Thwarting their ability to do so requires that we understand the tactics that police services use in order to entrap us while cruising. Knowledge of gay cruising practices has made it remarkably easy for private security forces and police services to entrap men who have sex with men. A conservative estimate suggests a sum of approximately 2.2 million dollars. Equally as striking are the sums of money that the Service des Grands Parcs has spent trying to make parks on the island of Montreal less attractive to men who have sex with men. 4 I say “at least” because the statistics obtained by filing access to information requests with these police services did not include statistics for certain projects or years. Together, the SPVM, the SPAL, and the SPVQ have arrested at least 300 men for cruising in public spaces since 2007. The number of arrests made within the context of these supposedly gender- and sexuality-neutral “anti-indecency” operations is alarming. Having co-opted our shared understanding of location, plainclothes cops are able to exploit, in a discrete, and largely unforceful manner, our need for affection and sexual companionship.
Using their knowledge of gay cruising practices, plainclothes cops continue to harass, ticket, and arrest men who seek out sexual companionship in places other than those officially recognized and legally sanctified by heterosexist sexual norms.
Similar projects have been launched by the Service de Police la Ville de Longueuil (SPAL), the Service de Police de la Ville de Saguenay (SPVS), the Service de Police de la Ville de Québec (SPVQ), and the Sûreté du Québec (SQ). With the collaboration of the Services des Grands Parcs, three neighbourhood police stations in Montreal have launched coordinated attacks on men who use the wooded areas and public washrooms of parks for the purposes of consensual sexual encounters with other men. Homophobic policing practices on the island of Montreal are far from over. Purposeful omission of parks and public washrooms. On August 28 2017, the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) officially apologized for “the events that took place during different police operations in gay bars and clubs during the ‘60s to the ‘90s.” 2 Emphasis on bars and clubs. Content warning: homophobic slurs, targeted arrests