From organized crime to disorganized crime

Before starting my text, allow me to tell you that I am very happy to see you again, dear readers.

Thirty years ago, there were also settling of accounts between criminal groups here. Let’s remember the famous biker war that rocked Montreal in the 1990s. An alliance led by the Rock Machine faced the Hells Angels for control of drug trafficking. Let us also remember the great collective indignation when this war accidentally killed an 11-year-old boy, Daniel Desrochers. This blunder was the last straw that led to the creation of the Carcajou anti-biker squad and the adoption of an anti-gang law in May 1997. Two initiatives that were to make life difficult for criminal bikers.

I think that in this new crisis of banditry, Montreal is at this same crossroads. Today, hearing about an innocent person accidentally killed by gangsters playing with guns or mistaking Montreal for a cowboy movie set is almost trivialized.

It is in the form of this banditry more than in its scope that this problem is found, which has considerably undermined the feeling of security of a large part of the Montreal population. It’s as if we had gone from organized crime to totally disorganized crime. This new gangsterism does not hesitate to shoot people seated in a family restaurant in broad daylight and claim innocent victims.

The laxity of the Trudeau government on the issue of the illegal firearms trade and the lack of confidence of Valérie Plante’s administration have paved the way for what increasingly resembles urban guerrilla warfare. Even if some specialists in the matter say, with supporting statistics, that the city is still very safe, for many citizens, their beloved Montreal has become unrecognizable and it will take a big blow to hope to reverse this trend. Unfortunately, after each murder, we realize more and more how uncomfortable Valérie Plante seems with this saga. It must be said that the mayor of Montreal has already flirted with the ideologies of defunding the police. A skid which, rightly or wrongly, still sticks to his skin.

It is true that “always more police” cannot be the only solution to the problems of insecurity and that we must keep a very critical eye on the police to avoid the unfortunate slippages that sometimes make the headlines. That said, it should also be remembered that these forces are more than indispensable and that the vast majority of police officers are honest citizens serving the greatest good that a society can possess: security.

Of course, the police are not the only solution. The work of community groups and the fight against precariousness are other equally essential ways of fighting crime. Also, pleading for a reinforcement of the two fronts without speaking of defunding the police is in my opinion much more constructive. To think that humans are naturally good in the absence of law is a great delusion. If the police were weakened, the first to live in terror would be the same ones who are calling for its defunding. In question, criminal groups would quickly take control of certain neighborhoods and the richest would surround themselves with barriers and hire private militias to ensure their safety and that of their children.

On October 7, 1969, a strike by police and firefighters in the city of Montreal showed people here what the nation could look like without police. The forces of order having become invisible in the streets, anarchy quickly took hold in the city. Within hours, vandalism, bank robberies, arson, pitched battles and gunfights were reported across the city. There were 456 break-ins in a single day. This story reminds us to what extent the police and the courts are at the center of social peace and also represent the foundations of a healthy democracy.

That said, for the Montreal police, today’s case is more delicate than that of the bikers of the 1990s. In these times when the images of social and traditional media, relayed massively, can lead to a crucifixion without trial, the police are scared when it is the criminals who should be scared. They know that the road to settling this new form of urban gangsterism is paved with mines.

Indeed, infiltrations, tapping and preventive arrests of suspicious people will be inevitable. But how do you navigate smoothly with these tools when phone cameras are everywhere? It won’t be easy, but we’ll have to find a way through. Valérie Plante should perhaps call Rudy Giuliani, the same man who dripped from the front to defend Trump, who had become his guru. He was once very effective in this area when he was mayor of New York between 1994 and 2001. With his “zero tolerance” policy, Giuliani had significantly reduced the crime and delinquency that had transformed New York in a true wild west before his election.

In a society that wants to be visionary, we can both give the police the necessary means to track down criminals, fight against poverty and invest in community groups that work upstream to do prevention. It is from this multidirectional fight that the victory over this scourge will come, and not from these ideologies of definancing and political recoveries. What happens in Montreal should concern the whole nation, because Montreal is the heart of Quebec. When the heart falters, the peripheral organs always end up kicking.