Change the way police arrests are made while maintaining the support of police officers and the confidence of Montrealers.
This is the first real test for the new chief of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), Fady Dagher.
A test for which there must absolutely be an obligation of result.
The new head of the SPVM does not want to hear about a moratorium on police arrests, or the act of intercepting a citizen. But the moratorium is the main recommendation of a report filed last week by independent researchers commissioned by the Montreal police.
This report follows another, filed in 2019, which concluded, among other things, that members of racialized groups were overrepresented in the statistics. This finding prompted the SPVM to adopt a policy that now prohibits random arrests.
However, it seems that this new policy, adopted in 2020, has not had a great effect on the police, at least if we rely on the comments collected by the researchers.
The latter note that the police have not changed their minds about the way to make arrests even if the policy has come to mark out the intervention. They do not recognize the existence of bias towards racialized groups and perceive any discussion on the subject as a criticism of their work.
The gap is therefore immense between the groups in society who denounce the discriminatory, even racist nature of police arrests, and the view that the police have of them.
We go a long way.
However, the SPVM has been considering these questions since 2017. Its policy on questioning is the result of numerous consultations and recommendations that began six years ago.
And Montreal is far from the only city where these practices are questioned. Most police services that have conducted studies on the subject have all come to the same conclusion: racial profiling is one of the perverse effects of arrest, and racialized people suffer from it. Not to mention that this practice can completely go wrong as we have (again) seen this week in France.
The cities of Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton have recently reviewed their stop policies. After a devastating report, the province of Nova Scotia banned them outright.
Fady Dagher therefore opposes the moratorium, but he does not deny the existence of racial profiling. He has often told in the past to have been both the author and the victim. But in his eyes, the imposition of a moratorium would deprive his police of an essential work tool.
The head of the SPVM therefore prefers to attack the culture rather than the structure. He asks the people of Montreal to trust him: he promises to change things from within. And he is committed to setting up several committees that will build bridges with the Montreal communities he wishes to include in the reflection on police work.
We can guess the very uncomfortable position in which Mr. Dagher finds himself. Imposing a moratorium means alienating your troops from the start of your mandate. It is no coincidence that the immersion program dear to his heart is only imposed on new recruits. We guess that the veterans are not very keen on the idea of spending a month in community settings.
Between the desire to make big changes and pressure from the Police Brotherhood, Mr. Dagher has to navigate tight.
But that’s no reason to give him a blank check.
The new consultative structures he wants to put in place are an excellent idea, but they are not enough.
Concerning police arrests, there must be a system of accountability accompanied by a timetable.
We must be able to observe results within a reasonable time.
Time passes and Montrealers suffer from being arrested for no reason. They have been waiting too long for things to change. You won’t be able to stretch the elastic any longer.
As Judge Michel Yergeau said so well in the Luamba judgment, we cannot, as a society, tolerate that part of the population suffer in silence hoping that there will be an epiphany within the police force. .
He was referring to traffic stops without real reason, a police practice that is based on the Highway Code, but his sensitive remarks could just as well apply to police stops.
We want to trust the new head of the SPVM, but he will have to show that his approach produces results. Sooner than later.