Stéfanie Trudeau, 'Officer 728,' talks betrayal, suicide, and recovery
Author of a new tell-all book says Montreal police management 'threw her to the wolves'
Stéfanie Trudeau, the infamous Montreal police officer who has become known as "Officer 728," says Montreal police management and the union representing officers betrayed her when she needed them most.
"They're the one who threw me to the wolves," says Trudeau, author of a new tell-all book, Servir et Se Faire Salir.
"They threw me under a bus you know. They tried to have my skin. They didn't want me to speak."
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In an exclusive English interview with Daybreak Montreal host Mike Finnerty, while awaiting trial on charges of excessive use of force, Trudeau spoke candidly about her past controversies and her decision to throw away her uniform after nearly two decades on the job.
Pepper-spraying demonstrators
Trudeau first gained notoriety during the Maple Spring of 2012 when she was filmed pepper-spraying protesters multiple times during a student demonstration.
The video was widely shared and many felt the action was heavy handed.
In conversation with Finnerty, Trudeau says she was right to use the pepper spray on the protestor and that she was instructed by a superior officer to do so a second time.
Back then, Cmdr. Ian Lafrenière, the lead spokesperson for Montreal police, said the officer filmed in the intervention "dropped the ball."
Trudeau says that Lafrenière may have never mentioned her by name, but that her career was over after that, since her badge number had been circulating online along with the footage.
She wanted to remain on desk duty but an administrative decision put her back in the field.
Trudeau says she felt like she was a marked woman and had fellow officer warn her that people where looking for her, that they "were out for her head."
In response to those comments, Lafrenière told CBC in an email recently that Trudeau is still a paid member of the force and said the debate about her career is an issue between her and her employer.
He added that "sometimes we drop the ball" is a common expression used when the police take a decision and afterward find out that it wasn't maybe the best.
He maintains that when he used that expression he was referring to the police as an organisation and not specifically to Trudeau.
Another incident caught on tape
During an intervention on Oct. 2, 2012, Trudeau was caught on tape applying a headlock on a man in a cramped stairwell.
Witnesses called on Trudeau to release him from the hold and questioned if the force was necessary. Trudeau says she felt she had to intervene after spotting the man on the street with an open bottle of beer.
Following the intervention, Trudeau seized the cellphone of a witness who was getting "too involved" and was asked to leave "at least 20 times."
While leaving the scene, she put the phone in her cruiser. Unbeknownst to her, it had been set to record audio and captured a heated call between Trudeau and her wife.
"All the rats that were upstairs … these guitar playing [expletive] … all a bunch of red square types, all artists, basically a bunch of assholes, and they all started coming out of the apartment," Trudeau is heard saying on the recording.
Red squares refers to the symbols worn by supporters of the student protest.
Speaking to Finnerty, Trudeau admits she was upset while speaking to her wife, but feels that the tape should have never been made public.
She says the media got the story wrong and reported that the conversation was between her and supervisor at the Montreal police.
"It was the cherry on the sundae," she told CBC. "It finished a great 18-year long career."
Trudeau was suspended with pay following the incident.
She was later charged with using excessive force and is due to go trial in 2016. Charges against the man she arrested have been dropped.
'The tension was unbearable'
Following her suspension, Trudeau says the anxiety and stress began to get to her.
"The tension was unbearable," said Trudeau.
"I had panic attacks that I never had. God knows I saw a lot of things in my days as a police officer."
She says she contemplated suicide and would sometimes get into her car and drive down the highway while thinking about running her car into the side of overpasses.
Trudeau credits a photo of her children on her car's sun visor from pulling her out of those moments and pushing her to get help.
It was at that point that she reached out to the Montreal Police Brotherhood, the union representing police officers.
But on the same day Trudeau asked the union for help, she was arrested and told she was a "danger to herself."
Trudeau was then fingerprinted and instructed to pose for a mug shot.
"They couldn't have done anything more wrong than that," she said.
After consulting with her lawyer, Trudeau chose to go to a psychiatric facility where she spent two weeks and emerged feeling better able to cope with the stress, she said.
No desire to return to duty
When asked if she had any regrets, Trudeau replied she wished she had put the cellphone that recorded her conversation into the trunk of her cruiser.
She says she was only verbalizing her anger and has the right to express frustration.
After her "two betrayals" at the hands of the Montreal police and the brotherhood, Trudeau says she threw out her uniform.
She remains on continued paid leave and has no plans to return to police work.
"I'm never going to serve society like this and be treated like this," she said.
Listen to part 1 and part 2 of Stéfanie Trudeau's exclusive, English-language interview with CBC Montreal's Daybreak.