SPVM | Body cameras will have to wait until 2023

Body cameras will not be deployed on Montreal police uniforms this year, contrary to the promise made by Valérie Plante during the election campaign, learned The Press.

Philippe Teisceira-Lessard
The Press

The Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) has decided to extend its tests with a view to using cell phones as cameras. This “proof of concept” will end this fall, too late for the program to be put into service before the end of the year, according to two police sources.

The Police Brotherhood says it is disappointed, while the opposition at City Hall denounces the mismanagement of the file.

The city’s public security official refused the request for an interview with The Press. In a written statement, Alain Vaillancourt indicates that there are still steps before the deployment of these cameras.

However, the Plante administration and Projet Montréal had assured in 2021 that this file would be unblocked quickly. The beginning of the year 2022 had even been established by the mayor to launch the deployment. During the election campaign last fall, Projet Montréal even made a formal promise to “provide Montreal police officers with body cameras from 2022”. At the end of 2021, Mr. Vaillancourt had confirmed this schedule: “We are committed to doing it”, he assured The Press.

Prolonged preparations

However, Montrealers who are waiting for these portable cameras – which would document the interactions of police officers with citizens – will still have to wait.

In an email, the SPVM indicated that the process was far from over. The service is currently testing in a “controlled simulation environment” rather than in the real world.

“At the request of the SPVM, the exercise which was to end in June 2022 has been extended and will instead end this fall,” the police department said. Once the tests have been completed, “a final report of the observations collected will be presented to the SPVM management and to the municipal administration of the City of Montreal”.

Mr. Vaillancourt specified that Montreal “still awaits the orientations and the decision of the Ministry of Public Security as to the technology which will be favored by the government”.

“We have a responsibility to do things right to ensure the success of this project,” he added. We must also make sure to invest in the best technology that will respect the criteria of the courts of justice and that will respect the ability to pay of Montrealers. »

Impatience

The Montreal Police Brotherhood, which represents officers, expressed disappointment at the further delays.

“We are waiting for them [les caméras] for a long time, so we are disappointed, but not surprised that the City, on the budgetary level, is prioritizing conditions to support the increase in the workforce,” said its president, Yves Francœur, to The Press.

The Brotherhood is in favor of deploying body cameras because it believes its members are often filmed in the course of their work and then carefully selected footage is posted on social media to spark controversy. The presence of cameras on the police side would make it possible to capture the entire police intervention.

The Official Opposition at City Hall denounced “another broken promise from Projet Montréal”.

The Plante administration, “this is the real obstacle” to the deployment of portable cameras in Montreal, argued Abdelhaq Sari, responsible for this file for the party Together Montreal. “There is no financial constraint, nor technological constraint, nor procedural constraint. »

Moreover, Mr. Sari doubts the idea of ​​using smart phones as portable cameras. “No police force of the size” of the SPVM would have chosen this option, he said. “It’s a way of saving time on the part of Projet Montréal. »