A Montreal man says he plans to contest a ticket he got early Saturday morning for walking in the middle of a Plateau street — because he figured it was safer than walking on an icy sidewalk.
Lateef Martin says he got the $48 fine not long after leaving a friend's house.
"My friend had actually just slipped that day, and showed me her bruise," Martin said. "Clearly I didn’t want to have the same fate, so I walked on the street."
He says at around 1:30 a.m., he was walking in the middle of the street, sober, and was not in the way of vehicle traffic, despite being in the middle of the street.
He says he watching for approaching vehicles. The first one he encountered was a police car. The officer asked Martin if he was okay, and when he told him he was, he then asked him where he was going.
"And I'm like, 'you don't need to know where I'm going, I haven't done anything wrong,'" Martin said. "He said, you know, it's an infraction, you're walking on the street when the sidewalks are perfectly fine.' I was like, 'no, they're not fine. There's no salt on the ground. I don't want to fall and break my neck.'"
He admits he was being uncooperative with the officer, but doesn't regret how he handled the situation. He says it was a case of walking while black.
"This is why people don't like the police, because they bully people," he said.