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It’s a scenario many black men in the Montreal region have been complaining about for years. They’re driving around, minding their own business, when suddenly they’re pulled over by a police officer. John Chilcott says it has happened to him at least three times near his Châteauguay home over the last few years.

So on Monday of last week, when a young police officer stopped him outside the apartment building where he lives as he was preparing to drive his two youngest children to school, Chilcott assumed it was a case of “driving while black.”

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I’m fed up being targeted because of my skin colour or the way I dress

On this occasion, Chilcott refused to comply when the officer asked him to identify himself, saying he first wanted to know why he was being stopped.

Chilcott’s wife, Rosemarie Edwards, was watching the scene unfold from her apartment window, and said she couldn’t believe what happened next.

After Chilcott again refused to identify himself, the police officer took out his pepper spray and sprayed Chilcott in the face while his daughters, age 10 and 6, were in the back seat of his Ford Explorer.

“My kids were screaming in the back: ‘Daddy, what is going on? My throat is sore!’ ” Chilcott, 43, told The Montreal Gazette. “I was saying, ‘This is not fair, why are you doing this to me?’ There was no reason to be intimidated by me. I was just taking my kids to school.”