It happened in the heart of Montreal. In broad daylight. While there were lots of people around. The bullets whistled as customers ate their pizza on rue Saint-Denis, as they shopped at the Rockland shopping center.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
Faced with these two murders in half an hour on Tuesday, we must brandish an arsenal of measures to curb the escalation of shootings in the metropolis. But above all, let’s start by giving our police officers a little pat on the shoulder, collectively and politically.
For years, the forces of order have not had a good press. And that is understandable. The horrific death of George Floyd, suffocated under the knee of a police officer in the United States, in 2020, or that of the young Fredy Villanueva, shot dead in Montreal North, in 2008, triggered a wave of protests against police brutality and racial profiling.
That is. Abuses and discrimination must be denounced. Again and again.
But not all police are bastards, as some claim. Remember in January, an actress from the series “Reasonable Doubt” had posted a photo of herself dressed as a policewoman on Instagram. On his uniform, you could see the letters ACAB: All Cops are Bastards. Old anti-police slogan.
The mistrust and resentment of the public, the police feel it on a daily basis. Filmed during the interventions, they sometimes wake up with a tidal wave of insults on social media.
But they are even more demoralized by the attitude of the mayor towards them.
Last year, when Mamadi III Fara Camara was wrongly accused of wanting to kill a police officer, Valérie Plante had launched the idea of racial profiling, even before the end of the investigation. Eventually, an independent report established that this was not the case. Whoops.
On Friday, mayoress Plante insisted that she had no intention of defunding the police, it’s not for nothing that this label sticks to her skin.
In the last elections, it was she who chose an activist in favor of defunding as a candidate for mayor of Montreal North.
And it was only pushed into the cables by her opponent Denis Coderre that she ended up promising the addition of 250 police officers to the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM).
It is true that the SPVM budget has increased since the arrival of Valérie Plante at City Hall in 2018. But by consulting the annual reports, we see on the other hand that the number of police officers has slipped by 6% , from 4,591 at the end of 2017 to 4,338 as of August 15, according to the Brotherhood of Police Officers.
That’s 253 fewer police officers in five years. To the wave of retirements that was easy to predict, was added an increase in resignations on the part of police officers who were fed up with the work climate.
Recruiting is hardly simpler: out of 20 recruits who were to enter in September, 16 withdrew. In addition to the entry salary, which is a little lower than at the Sûreté du Québec, the price of housing and the travel time put them off.
It will however be necessary to replenish the troops, because crime, it, does not take a break.
In Montreal, crimes against the person rose 17% last year compared to the average of the previous five years, a record for 10 years. And across the country, the rate of homicides committed with a firearm has been increasing since 2013, according to Statistics Canada.
We are on a bad slope. We must send a strong political signal. Make the police more visible. To act against criminals and reassure the population.
In 1995, the death of a child, an innocent victim of the explosion of a car during the biker war, led to the creation of the Carcajou squad to fight against organized crime.
Today, we also need a plan to fight crime, this time more disorganized. Young people from street gangs have been fed to social media where the escalation of insults is rising rapidly. It trivializes the firearms that have become so easy to obtain.
It is true that Ottawa is going to ban the sale of handguns with Bill C-21. So much the better. But that will have a limited impact on criminals, as 85% of guns seized come from the US black market, according to the Toronto Police Service. Not to mention that we can now print polymer weapons and order the parts without even having a permit, a loophole that should be plugged.
It is also true that Quebec released $90 million last year for its Centaur strategy to combat firearms smuggling.
For now, the authorities remain reluctant to intervene on the Akwesasne reserve, which straddles the United States, Quebec and Ontario. But we can’t just seize weapons, without better monitoring the border. It’s like trying to empty the St. Lawrence with a boiler.