Thunderbolt: Fady Dagher returns to the fold and becomes chief of the Police Department of the City of Montreal. We thought he was handcuffed to the headquarters of the police chief in Longueuil, he who had signed an eight-year contract there, in December 2021.
Thunderclap?
Fady Dagher is crowned with a public notoriety born from his numerous media outings. He knows how to talk about the police simply and intelligently. He speaks from the heart, confident for example that he himself has done racial profiling…
Which allowed him, he often repeated, to see its uselessness.
A few weeks after a judgment prohibiting racial profiling, this detail is not trivial1.
In Montreal, Fady Dagher will earn (a little) less than the $300,000 a year that Longueuil gave him2. But according to my information, the City of Montreal granted him a seven-year contract, an unusual length for an SPVM director: contracts are usually for five years.
Mr. Dagher had his ear ripped off. But from what I was able to learn, the offer was simply irresistible: the SPVM is one of the three largest police forces in Canada, it is “in the Service” that Fady Dagher grew up. He prepared for a long time to become the chef and he dreamed of it for a long time…
A dream broken by the administration of Denis Coderre who, in 2015, preferred Philippe Pichet to him.
Mr. Dagher went to Longueuil and Mr. Pichet never finished his disastrous mandate, tarnished by all kinds of scandals that ended up ejecting him from his seat, something never seen in Montreal.
In Longueuil, Fady Dagher has shaken up police habits and certainties with avant-garde ideas3including the RESO, which makes the police work upstream of calls to 911, to prevent them.
The idea is progressive, but the police institution is not always so: there was resistance. The project is being studied by academics: the verdict on its quantified success (or not) will not be known for a few years.
This RESO Project has received a lot of love from the media (including a documentary series on RDI) and from politics: the Government of Quebec has enthusiastically funded the RESO4.
With the surprise departure of Sylvain Caron in retirement, we knew that a successor would have to be found for him at the head of the SPVM. Sophie Roy took over as interim. We didn’t think she was interested in the job… Until she applied.
Mr. Dagher’s name was never mentioned in the calculations of the last few weeks: as I was saying, we thought he was solidly attached to Longueuil. On November 3, Paul Arcand still asked him if he was interested in running the SPVM…
“I will not apply,” he replied.
– And if you are asked to come?
– I will not go into hypotheses, ”retorted Fady Dagher.
Listening carefully to the answer, Fady Dagher stammers a little. Because that’s exactly what happened: “we” had asked him to apply…
The symbol of Fady Dagher’s selection is doubly powerful.
One, the avant-garde approach of Chef Dagher in Longueuil, it is this spirit that City Hall wishes to see spread throughout Montreal… In a much more complex social and security environment than in Longueuil: Montreal is one of the three major police services in Canada, along with Toronto and Vancouver.
Two, Fady Dagher becomes Montreal’s first police chief born outside of Canada. Of Lebanese origin, he grew up in the Ivory Coast. He has never made a secret of his love of Quebec, he feels he owes Quebec.
Let it be said: you can be born in Africa to Lebanese parents and become chief of police in Montreal. Fady Dagher is proof of that. Hopefully this will reassure a good part of the citizens of this mixed city.
He arrives at the head of the SPVM in a period of turbulence. The numerous shootings shake the traditional sense of security of Montrealers, in a context where the police complain of not being supported by the population… And a part of the population, those of immigrant origin, mainly – like Mr. Dagher – , feels unfairly targeted by the police.
Leading the SPVM has always been a perilous exercise, where you have to navigate a difficult environment. We must earn the respect of the troops without losing that of the population, in a context where social networks amplify any form of discontent. Politics must be kept at a distance without alienating it. Difficult decisions have to be made from a labor relations point of view without alienating the Police Brotherhood.
We will have to fight for budgets, in an era where the defunding of the police makes noisy activists salivate. It will be necessary to convince the police to make a more social turn… while arresting the bandits, who do exist.
All this in a metropolis where there will inevitably be demonstrations in the streets, perhaps one or two rascals arrested, embarrassing leaks in the media, the embarrassing arrest of an innocent person and, of course, the proverbial “muscular” arrest , which will provoke reactions as far as the National Assembly.
Not to mention the power struggles within the SPVM itself, struggles that have often degenerated in the past: past leadership races have often left metaphorical blood on the walls of the HQ on rue Saint-Urbain, as recently recalled with accuracy Daniel Renaud in The Press5.
He is a solid leader who takes control of the SPVM, more solid than if he had won the 2015 competition.
Today it will be celebrated and praised. It will undoubtedly be one of the most beautiful days of Fady Dagher’s life, he had dreamed of this day for more than a decade.
Starting tomorrow, the seven most demanding years of Fady Dagher’s life begin.