Lawyer's fees for SAAQ clerical error arrest

I wasn’t going to do this, but here I am. Let’s give it a go.

In the middle of March, I was pulled over by the police. I was confused. I thought maybe they saw me use my phone to change the song about 3 blocks before? The police officer told me my license was suspended. I was genuinely shocked. I paid my tickets off. I have a paper proving this, and the woman at the city even wrote a note on the back of my license so there would be no problems. I showed this to the police officer and she advised it’s possible there is some sort of mixup. She advised me to schedule an SAAQ appointment ASAP.

I scheduled the first available SAAQ appointment for the next day I had off from work.

On my way to the appointment, I was going 45 in a 30km/hr zone and was pulled over by a police officer, Mr. Sanjay Vig. I accepted my speeding ticket and was bracing myself for the explanation I would need to give. I told him I was aware there was a suspension for my license, I was not sure why as all my tickets were settled, and that I was on my way to an SAAQ appointment in 15 minutes to iron it out.

The cop was quite aggressive from the beginning. I tried showing him my papers confirming all my tickets were settled, but he did not want to look at them. It was unbelievably difficult to speak with him. He was loud, interruptive, not listening, and brute beyond reason. I was so shocked that he would not even look at the paper I had from the SAAQ.

He did not believe me. He refused to even look! I had an email confirmation for the appt on my phone which he did look at, thank god. But he still called a tow truck to seize my vehicle and destroyed my driver’s license.

I tried to reason with him that there was an administrative error of some sort because my license should not have been suspended. I asked him when my license was suspended. He said “about a year” which I later found out was a bluff on his end as police don’t have access to this information. This made me even more sure that there was an administrative error, as I had settled my tickets about a year ago. There was nothing recent that could have affected the state of my license. This was not the only lie the cop told me.

I kept pleading for him to let me go to the SAAQ for my appointment. At one point, he said, “you can go, but I’ve called a tow truck.” At this, I started driving to the SAAQ because I thought he was giving me some grace. Turns out, he was not. He pulled me over again and arrested me for “obstruction of justice”. I could not believe what was happening. There I was in the back of a police car, in handcuffs. I’m crying, and the police officer is telling me I’ll never be able to travel to the U.S again because I’m a criminal now. He said he would destroy my license. I asked him why? He said “because I can”. Then he googled the law in front of me, just to doublecheck the legality on that, and showed me. “See?” He said. “I’m allowed.”

This officer told me he had been with the SPVM for 24 years and he had to google the law in front of me.

I must tell you that it took a couple weeks following the trail to find out definitively what happened, and even then it's hazy. After visiting the Ville de Montréal office and the SAAQ twice (one day, I spent 7 hours at the SAAQ and no one could tell me why my license was suspended), we finally figured out that while my tickets were paid, they were never lifted from my file, hence this suspension I never knew about, received a letter about, nothing. It was left for surprise. That one 7-hour day I spent at the SAAQ changed something inside me. I unlocked a new level of frustrated existence. It's hard to describe, but it feels uniquely Québécois. After weeks without my car the SAAQ released my vehicle from the tow yard free of charge and rectified my file.

I could go on forever, but the point is that I was charged with a criminal offense for which I need to present in front of a judge, have my fingerprints taken, hire a lawyer, all because of a clerical error on the part of our provincial department of motor vehicles. The maximum sentence for this is 2 years in prison.

My lawyer advised that my case is solid, but I should not go in alone. I need him.

I thought I could make it work, but I can’t. I expected certain things that didn’t happen. There were things I did not expect that happened. So I am asking for help to pay my lawyer fees - $2,000.00. By June 25th. Anything helps.

Some important footnotes about this:

Turns out I’m not the first to have issues with Officer Sanjay Vig. I have filed an official complaint with the Commissaire à la déontologie policière. I have e-mailed news outlets with my story, as well.

I also intend to sue the SAAQ for my grievances as my arrest was a direct result of their negligence which was worsened by their incompetence even after the fact.

I have attached some articles & court docs I found about him:

Excerpt from the article:

“has a reputation among neighbourhood residents for being abusive, and has been accused of and suspended for misconduct towards an Arab man and homophobic slurs, both in the course of routine traffic stops […] the wrongful aggressive arrest, detention and charging of Mamadi III Fara Camara (as well as the ransacking of his house) who has subsequently been freed and cleared of all charges.”

Content Summary :

Vig was brought to court for soliciting cash from a citizen during a routine traffic stop. Whether he was soliciting a bribe or simply not following procedure is unclear. He also charged the citizen with obstruction of justice which was dropped as a result of his misconduct. Vig was suspended for 2 days per the Police Ethics Committee of Montreal.