The shootings resumed with renewed vigor in the vicinity of Montreal and Laval. The Minister of Public Security, Geneviève Guilbault, this week asked the main police forces what their needs and their strategies were to stem this social plague.
After investing $90 million in the fight against firearms, Quebec is entitled to ask police organizations for their game plan. So far, the police response has not impressed. In The Presssenior police officers speaking on condition of anonymity are in turn calling for the police to be left to do their job, for Ottawa to reverse its decision to abolish minimum sentences for gun crimes fire, or even that they are given more powers to facilitate arrests and searches… To the detriment of civil liberties, it must be added.
So many false good ideas. Without knowing everything about the secrecy of the investigations, civil society is entitled to know how the police intend to tackle this real and urgent problem. According to data recorded by the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal, 62 violent events occurred in the first four months of 2022. These are shootings, murders with firearms and attempted murders with weapons. fire. Citizens rightly fear for their safety when shootings break out in otherwise peaceful neighborhoods.
Police officers and prosecutors use falsely reassuring rhetoric when they call for harsher sentences for crimes committed with firearms. Justice is not ready-made, it is tailor-made: each offender must correspond to a fair and reasonable sentence.
While it is true that the perpetrators of murder and attempted murder must be severely punished, the premise that the severity of sentences has a deterrent effect on offenders is ill-founded. The likelihood of being caught, as well as the ease of committing a crime, have a much greater impact on criminal opportunity.
So let’s not lose sight of the importance of upstream work. Guns are easy to find, and they sell for cheap in underground markets controlled by organized crime. It is on these criminal networks with cross-border ramifications that it is necessary to strike in priority, with force, to hope for a return of tranquility in urban areas.