Missing persons | The SQ and the SPVM are working twice as hard

On August 18, 2016, Marie-Claude Hébert wrote a letter in which she said she wanted to stop wrestling. She put it on her kitchen table, next to her will, left her apartment in Plessisville and was never seen again, neither alive nor dead. For more than five years, his family has lived in the unknown.

“There still remains a doubt as to where she is? Is she in pain? Imagination, I have a lot. I made several scenarios in my head,” said his mother, Louise Faucher, sadly.

Every year in Quebec, dozens of people disappear without their family knowing if their body has been found and what has happened to their loved one, often years after the disappearance, or even never.

As much at the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) as at the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), we now hope to be able to find more missing persons and give more answers to the families.

Since October, the SQ has doubled the staff of its Integrated Disappearances and Abductions Coordination Team (EICDE), while the SPVM is in the process of creating a completely new similar team.

These additions of police resources on disappearances stem from an announcement made almost ten months ago by the former Minister of Public Security, Geneviève Guilbault.

In the wake of the recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Police Reality, Ms.^me Guilbault had announced that the government was releasing 10 million over five years to improve the coordination of searches for missing or abducted persons.

It is the Ministry of Public Security that will assume most of the salaries of these new staff.

The improved SQ team has been operational since the beginning of December and has already been involved in a hundred cases, including the high-profile disappearance of Eduardo Malpica, which occurred last November in Trois-Rivières.

That of the SPVM should be operational as of April. It will be autonomous and will have 12 investigators, a coordinator and a lieutenant-detective dispersed on the island of Montreal.

15,000 disappearances per year

Year after year, there are approximately 15,000 disappearances per year in Quebec, divided into approximately three equal parts between those occurring on the territory of the SQ, on that of the SPVM and on those of other municipal and Aboriginal police forces.

Most missing people are found within seven days, but some have not returned after 60 days. After this time, it is rare that they are found, and the police consider that they will not return.

The SQ and SPVM teams will often work in partnership, but their mandate will be different.

The SPVM will investigate disappearances that have occurred on its territory, while the Sûreté du Québec will coordinate investigations into disappearances and ensure follow-up in the various stations of the SQ and the Aboriginal and municipal police forces in the province, except in Montreal, in addition standardize ways of doing things throughout Quebec.

“We establish the guiding line of the file”, summarizes Captain Alex Grenier, boss of the Integrated Team in coordination of disappearances and kidnappings of the SQ.

“That means that on day 1 of the disappearance, the first steps that a patrol officer must take will be the same everywhere and we will make sure that all the police steps are taken and that there is a adequate case management. »

“We have a computer tool that allows us to monitor all disappearance files in Quebec on a daily basis. If, after seven days, a disappearance file is still not settled, it is automatic, a coordinator will call the police officer in charge. In a case where there are issues, the team gets on board from the start,” explains Alex Grenier, according to whom this coordination will prevent a file from ending up on the desk of an investigator who has gone on leave or falls between two chairs.

Of the dozens of unidentified bodies

According to the SQ, there are approximately 30 to 40 cases of missing persons who are not found after 60 days each year in Quebec.

There are currently about forty bodies or unidentified human remains of missing persons – the oldest date back to the end of the 1980s – which are appraised at the Laboratory of Forensic Sciences and Forensic Medicine, so as many families in the unknown .

Now that there are advanced technologies for identifying bodies, such as DNA and analyzes in genealogical databases, one of the important objectives for the SQ and SPVM disappearance teams is to find “concordances” and to identify more and more of these orphan bodies, to give answers to the families, even years later.

“We will follow up with the families. We are going to put a lot of effort into obtaining DNA, dental records, anything to be able to answer the families’ questions so that at least they are able to grieve when currently, in many cases, they are in the unknown,” says Jean-Sébastien Caron, Major Crimes Commander of the SPVM and head of the future Disappearance, Family Search and Abduction Team (EDRE).

“It’s important for families to have answers. There is nothing worse than not knowing. I can put myself in the shoes of a relative who is waiting for the return of a relative and, finally, he learns that the body has been in the morgue for three years. We want to eliminate these situations, ”adds Captain Grenier.

“It is very important that the police put in the effort. It’s very reassuring to know that they are still looking. If ever, one day, I receive a call telling me that Marie-Claude has been found and identified, I will cry, that’s for sure. But it will help us to grieve. Knowing that she is really dead would remove a lot of questions and bring peace of mind,” concludes Ms.^me Mow.

The members of the SQ’s integrated team also have the mandate to investigate extra-provincial parental abductions and to rule on the triggering of the AMBER and Silver alerts, this new alert being intended to find missing persons with a neurocognitive disorder. major.

The police officers of the SPVM team will also investigate the parental abductions.

To reach Daniel Renaud, dial 514 285-7000, ext. 4918, write to [email protected] or write to the postal address of The Press.