Ahead of a hot summer for gun violence, Laval police are stepping up their strategy to hound criminals, which has already shown promising results by reducing shootings in the territory by 50% last year .
“We want to tell criminals that we are on their heels, they will see us in their rear view mirror. We won’t let them go. All this to give citizens the same sense of security as before,” says Jean-François Rousselle, assistant director of criminal investigations at the Laval Police Department (SPL).
Faced with a rise in gun violence throughout Greater Montreal, the Laval police took the bull by the horns by creating the Paradoxe project. Again last summer, three shootings in the middle of the afternoon in as many days had terrorized Laval residents.
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“The phenomenon really came to challenge our police officers, who wanted to break this wave,” reports Mr. Rousselle.
MARTIN ALARIE / THE MONTREAL JOURNAL
Jean-François Rousselle, assistant director of criminal investigations for the SPL.
A hard core
During the summer season in Laval, different squads will be present and will put strong pressure “on the hard core of criminals closely linked to the shootings on the territory”.
Among other things, the Equinoxe squad will intensify its visits to bars, terraces and restaurants where organized crime people gather to gather information. Police officers on bicycles will be visible in the parks and will prioritize problem areas.
In its strategy, the police force also prioritizes cases related to urban violence, sometimes even to the detriment of other investigations.
106 shots avoided
Last year, the number of firearm discharges fell by 50%. The police found 99 casings in 2022, compared to 205 the year before.
MAXIME DELAND/QMI AGENCY
Shots were fired in the window of a residence located on 63rd Avenue, in the Chomedey district, in Laval, on Tuesday, October 18, 2022. MAXIME DELAND/AGENCE QMI
“It’s 106 shots that did not take place in 2022 and which could have caused collateral damage such as hitting innocent citizens”, underlines Jean-François Rousselle.
The number of arrests and seizures of weapons also doubled compared to the average of the previous three years.
If the strategy works, it is because the police force has changed the way it works internally, believes the assistant director. “In the police, we tend to work in a very divided way. Street gangs, narcotics, murders; everything was divided into silos, he admits. There, we put armed violence at the center and the squads gravitate around it, meet and work together.
Unpredictable
Urban violence remains a volatile and unpredictable phenomenon: “A conflict on Snapchat or Instagram can ignite the powder. Sometimes minor conflicts, like romances, escalate into gunfights. And gang alliances are changing rapidly. It makes it difficult to logically understand what is happening on the ground, and the police must constantly renew themselves, ”explains Mr. Rousselle.
For this reason, community agents work in prevention with young people, in particular through police officers assigned to secondary schools. In collaboration with a community organization, the SPL has also set up boxing activities, which allow police officers to interact with young people at risk of falling into the vicious circle of delinquency.
A few statistics in Laval
Gun dumps:
- 2019: 18
- 2020: 40
- 2021: 43
- 2022: 24
Number of arrests in connection with events involving firearms:
- 2019: 26
- 2020: 34
- 2021: 38
- 2022: 46
Seized firearms:
2019: 27
2020: 40
2021: 41
2022: 57