In the space of a few days last week, two women were killed in Montreal. These murders received very little attention in the media or among our political leaders – no doubt because the acts do not fit into the dominant discourse on violence in Montreal.
Posted at 4:00 p.m.
Indeed, the alleged murderers of Gisèle Itale Betondi and Viergemene Toussaint were their ex-spouses, not a member of a street gang. Both used a knife, not a gun. Contrary to mainstream discourse, these facts make the murders incidents more representative of violence in the metropolis, and not the other way around.
For more than two years, the dominant discourse on firearms in Montreal has been based on a biased and misleading conception of the situation.
One of the problems is that it is the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) that has control over crime-related data, and that it tends to communicate only the most alarming information. about gun violence.
The SPVM’s annual report for 2021, published last July, contained data on crimes against the person involving a firearm. These, however, only covered two years (although data is available for four years) and three crime categories (although data is available for six categories). The published data showed an alarming rise in gun violence, with three times more homicides and twice as many firearms discharges in 2021 than in 2020.
But what about missing categories and years? This additional data, which the SPVM took two months to provide me, speaks volumes. It’s perhaps no coincidence that two of the three missing categories — sexual assault and robbery — declined between 2018 and 2021. The third category, assault, includes firearm discharges. These crimes have increased from 2018 to 2021, but much less than the part of the category (discharges) that the SPVM has chosen to publish.
Taking this additional data into account, gun crime shows a modest increase of 3% between 2018 and 2021.
Excluded data
This is the second year in a row that relevant data has been excluded from the SPVM’s annual report, thereby exaggerating the threat of firearms. As I explained in an article published in The Press Last year1the SPVM argued in its 2020 report that gun violence had increased by 14% from 2019 to 2020. But if we take into account the 2018 data, which the Service collected, but did not disclose, crime army decreased by 20% over a two-year period.
This more representative portrait of the situation challenges the dominant discourse. First, there is no evidence that Montreal is suddenly inundated with firearms. It’s impossible to know the precise number of firearms in circulation in the city, but it’s hard to believe there are more than before if gun crime has remained stable between 2018 and 2021.
Moreover, the number of firearms seized each year has remained relatively stable (593 in 2018 compared to 628 in 2021) despite the SPVM’s growing efforts to combat gun crime.
Second, the situation is much more nuanced than the prevailing discourse suggests. Most gun crime categories are down, and overall gun crime is relatively stable. We can acknowledge these facts while treating the rise in homicides and attempted murders involving firearms with the seriousness they deserve.
On the other hand, it should be recognized that it is rather rare for violence in Montreal to involve gangs or firearms. In 2021, there were twice as many murders attributed to interpersonal conflict (including feminicide) than to gangs. For the same year, just under half of the homicides involved a firearm. An even smaller percentage of attempted murders involved one, and on the assault side, the proportion was just miniscule (1.8%).
If we really want to stem the violence, and prevent the recurrence of events like those that caused the deaths of Gisèle Itale Betondi and Viergemene Toussaint, we must look beyond armed violence.
In short, violence has many faces and multiple causes, and a wide range of solutions must be implemented to reduce it. In most cases, these solutions take the form of prevention programs run by non-police institutions and organizations.2.
Unfortunately, these nuances are lost when the reports focus on specific forms of violence and because the SPVM does not publish the data that would make it possible to become aware of it.