Valérie Plante wanted to be reassuring, Wednesday morning, about possible mergers of neighborhood stations in Montreal. The mayor maintained that her administration favored community policing and that no formal request for amalgamation had been filed by the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM).
“It is very important for us to send a clear message this morning, which is that community policing in our neighborhoods is important and that we are never going to do anything to jeopardize that, on the contrary. . What we want is for the link between the SPVM and the local communities to be ever stronger,” explained the mayor during the weekly meeting of the executive committee. “We do not intend to eliminate or remove neighborhood stations. »
These remarks follow the declarations of the director of the SPVM, Sylvain Caron who, during the presentation of the budget of the police force before the Finance Commission on January 6, had indicated that he was considering the closure of neighborhood police stations for budgets. He maintained then that the structure of 30 antennas disseminated on the territory was expensive and that he preferred to have more police officers on the ground rather than in buildings.
Valérie Plante clarified on Wednesday that no request had been filed by the SPVM for mergers of neighborhood stations. “We will wait to see the proposals of the police chief of the City of Montreal. It is part of its mandate and its prerogatives to make suggestions to us, but it is of course up to us to study them and, above all, to consult the public. »
The SPVM also filed the report on Wednesday on the very controversial merger that took place in October 2020 of neighborhood stations 9 and 11, in the borough of Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.
According to the SPVM, the merger of the two stations has had no negative impact on the territory served, although improvements are being considered to increase call response time.
Further details will follow.
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