Denis Coderre promises to hire 250 new police officers at the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) in order to restore calm in the metropolis.
The mayoral candidate, who makes the safety of Montreal’s streets his top priority, announced his plan to fight crime on Monday morning, along with his colleagues from Ensemble Montreal.
“I promise Montrealers that we will find a safe Montreal,” said Mr. Coderre. This will be the priority of our administration if the voters trust us. The new staff will not be concentrated in certain boroughs, but rather distributed throughout the island of Montreal.
As of December 31, 2020, Quebec authorized the SPVM to have 4,802 police officers, but the organization really had 4507. It is this gap that Mr. Coderre’s team wants to fill.
The political party also plans to file “an official request to the government of Quebec to modify the regulation imposing the limit” of 4,802 police officers, if necessary.
The candidate admitted that “there will always be” shootings in Montreal, but that his administration “will not stick its head in the sand” over the problem.
“We need to better finance and structure resources. It is important, because [la police] it’s 18% of Montreal’s budget, ”continued Mr. Coderre, who is proposing a contingency fund in order to have the funds available to deal with urgent situations.
In addition, Ensemble Montréal promises to launch “a call for tenders to provide us with portable cameras in the first 100 days of our mandate” and to “launch a debate on the installation of surveillance cameras” in “hot areas”. . Asked about the possible delays imposed by Quebec or the Sûreté du Québec, Mr. Coderre said that he “did not need them” to move forward. “We are a metropolis, we are not a village,” he said.