Montreal Police Chief Sylvain Caron took everyone by surprise recently. Questioned within the framework of the presentation of the budget of the SPVM, he launched a small bomb: he would think of merging several neighborhood stations. Mr. Caron said he no longer believed in the current structure. According to him, the Montreal police need another model.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
What is he basing this on? It’s not clear.
In the communications department – Mr. Caron did not want to explain it to us orally – we are told that the chief of police undertook internal consultations a few weeks ago. Managers, sociologists and criminologists would have been consulted. We are assured that he will conduct further consultations in the coming months.
When talking to people in the field, however, the most common response is, “I fell out of my chair. »
Because the truth is that this public outing of the chief of police was absolutely not announced. Even Montreal elected officials were not aware, that is to say.
It is not yet clear what Mr. Caron, who has held this position since 2018, has in mind, but his comments on the neighborhood stations – which he described as “a locker room where the police go to change” – have had the effect of a slap in the face for those who believe in it. And for whom the police established in its community and focused on prevention is more effective than a police focused on repression.
Remember that the Montreal neighborhood police will be 27 years old this year. It was set up in 1995 by Chief Jacques Duchesneau at a time when the police department was experiencing a serious crisis of confidence. Before giving birth to his project, for a year, Mr. Duchesneau held consultations and visited police services all over the world. The Montreal model has proven itself and interested people beyond our borders.
Over the years and police chiefs, the number of neighborhood stations has been reduced from 45 to 30. The next to be merged will be stations 31 and 33, in the north of the city, next spring. And it is far from enchanting the populations concerned.
Does the so-called “local” police need to be modernized? It’s possible. Already, in 2019, the police chief of Longueuil, Fady Dagher, wrote in The state of Quebec (a publication of the Institut du Nouveau Monde) that it was necessary to switch to a “consultative” policy. This means that the police should get even closer to their community, not move away from it. The police officers of the Social and Organizational Mutual Aid Network (RESO), who inspire other police forces in Quebec, are the embodiment of Chief Dagher’s thinking.
The exit of chef Sylvain Caron is all the more surprising since the day after the murder of young Thomas Trudel, last November, it was with one voice that everyone – politicians, community workers, teachers… – had insisted on the importance of upstream police work.
We had stressed how crucial it was for the police to work together with the social players in a neighbourhood, to establish a lasting bond of trust, to participate in knitting together the social fabric to ensure the cohesion of a neighborhood and fight crime and arms trafficking.
Two months later, Mr. Caron affirms that his police forces are scattered over the territory, that the police are “everywhere and nowhere at the same time”. Can we believe that we will be more effective by centralizing police operations within large police stations, which risk encouraging greater staff turnover, in addition to being physically distant from citizens?
It is permissible to doubt it.
In the communications of the SPVM, we want to be reassuring: the desire to be close to the population and the partners of the SPVM remains intact and “deeply anchored in our values”.
If it is a lack of money that motivates Chief Caron’s reflection, he will have to demonstrate that he has studied all the options: is there too much bureaucracy in the police? Too many useless reports to fill out that take the police away from their primary mission, being in the field? Is there fat to cut before closing neighborhood posts, too many bosses?
The demonstration must be done and it is up to Mr. Caron to do it. He will also have to meet Montrealers to listen to their needs and expectations. We cannot say that confidence in the SPVM is at its maximum these days. Prosecutions for racial profiling as well as the erroneous arrest of Mamadi Camara, among others, have done nothing to restore its image.
The police service is independent of politics, it is important to remember that. But its leader cannot decide alone, and unilaterally, on the philosophical orientation of the SPVM. This must be done with the support of elected officials and the population.