Montreal Man Arrested While Holding an Israeli Flag at the Grand Prix Sues the City and Four Montreal Police Officers

Daniel Bercovici has filed a lawsuit against the Ville de Montréal and four officers of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) over his arrest at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal on September 14, 2025, as he stood holding an Israeli flag in support of the Israel Premier Tech cycling team.

Bercovici attended the race as a spectator. He stood near the racecourse holding an Israeli flag vertically above his head while approximately 200 anti-Israel demonstrators protested the team's participation. According to the application, within seconds of approaching him, officers made physical contact, forced him along the barrier line, took him to the ground, handcuffed and searched him, searched his backpack, and arrested him for obstructing a peace officer. Officers took his flag and never returned it, and his flagpole was seized and marked for destruction. He sustained open wounds, abrasions, bruising, and handcuff injuries.

“The right to stand peacefully in a public place with an Israeli flag cannot depend on whether a hostile crowd approves of the message,” said Benjamin Ryberg, attorney and COO of The Lawfare Project. “Jewish expression, including the peaceful display of an Israeli flag, is entitled to the same protection as any other lawful expression. The Lawfare Project is supporting this case because the answer to hostility toward that expression cannot be to silence or remove the person exercising those rights.”

The entire sequence was captured on video by a person apparently sympathetic to the (anti-Israel) demonstration and published to YouTube the same day. According to the application, the footage shows Bercovici standing alone and still, flag upright, before officers advance on him. One officer is chest-to-chest with him within one second of arriving; both officers are upon him within three seconds. The application states that the video shows no resistance, no threatening conduct, no aggressive movement and no brandishing of the flag.

The application alleges that police reports, written from memory hours later, without contemporaneous notes, described Bercovici as taunting and insulting demonstrators, waving his flag aggressively, ignoring warnings and orders, resisting police, and carrying a homemade flagpole. It further alleges those statements are contradicted by the video, by the SPVM's own photographs showing a commercially manufactured lightweight telescoping flagpole, by inconsistencies among the reports themselves, and by the absence of any identified complainant.

According to the application, demonstrators converged on Bercovici and attempted to strike him with flagpoles as officers moved him along the barrier. The officers' own report recorded those attempts. No arrest was made and no investigation was opened concerning the assault on Bercovici. Yet the only person arrested was Bercovici.

Bercovici was prosecuted for obstruction for more than ten months. On July 28, 2026, the prosecution formally withdrew the charge, expressly because of the video evidence provided by the defense, as pleaded in the application.

“This case is about the right to express support for a participating team peacefully and safely in a public place, without being removed because others respond with hostility,” said Michael Hollander of Spiegel Ryan LLP, counsel for Mr. Bercovici. “It raises the question of who the police protect.”

“A police report is not a first draft. Prosecutors, courts and the public rely on it as an accurate account of what happened,” said Neil G. Oberman, partner at Spiegel Ryan LLP. “The application alleges that these reports were written hours later, from memory, and that the video contradicts them. Mr. Bercovici spent more than ten months defending a charge that was withdrawn because of that video. This lawsuit asks a simple question: who answers for that?”