Thirty guns off the street: SPVM
It’s difficult not to see the timing of the SPVM announcement that the Quiétude team captured 30 firearms and took them off the street as a response to this week’s critical study of the team’s tendency to arrest a preponderance of Black men. Although the seizures and arrests are being announced Friday, it seems this is a summary of actions taken over months.
Ephraim 20:22 on 2020-10-16 Permalink
What was the cost per firearm? Have we just stumbled into a giant waste of taxpayer money… AGAIN? What was the total cost of this operation? How many officers? What’s the estimate of these kind of weapons on the street? What percentage of these weapons have now been removed from circulation? What the desired result? Did it achieve this result? Did it really do anything other than waste money?
Jebediah Pallindrome 21:04 on 2020-10-16 Permalink
^ I was waiting for the Ayn Rand fanboy approach to police reform
By this logic, abandon all homicide investigations… particularly the difficult ones. Also stop investigating rapes and definitiely don’t look into any crimes involving children, as they are not typically high earners.
From now on the SPVM will only look into crimes with a high potential cost-benefit ratio:
Art theft, car theft, grand larceny, property crimes, drugs (but only for resale purposes). Also this logic means all cops should dedicate practically all their time on bylaw enforcement and issuing parking and speeding tickets
Next time don’t rage comment.
dwgs 21:13 on 2020-10-16 Permalink
I think maybe you’re reading a little too much into the comment Jebediah. Also, does this mean that you are a fan of Operation Quietude? Seems a strange stance from what I’ve seen of your stance on things. One more thing and Kate can rap my knuckles if I’m out of line but it’s bad form for the commenters to try to order each other about. It’s Kate’s place, she’s the only one who gets to make such suggestions.
Kate 21:14 on 2020-10-16 Permalink
Thank you, dwgs. I was just about to suggest Mr Pallindrome shouldn’t drunk-comment either.
Ephraim 22:26 on 2020-10-16 Permalink
@Pallindrome – Well, I guess you don’t know very much about policing, budgeting or stats… or me. For the most part, most police don’t really solve crimes anymore, they report crime. They also arrest, not prosecute, which many people forget.
It’s important to know what this cost, what the objectives were and if this is at all efficient to know if maybe we can better allocate funds to more effective programs that will actually help…. like in actually catching up on DNA rape kits, doing genetic genealogy to catch people and investing in housing for the homeless. Oh and a top priority for the Montreal police, learning how to stop discriminating against people of colour.
Police don’t really do much about car theft, nor can they, other than setting up traps. Technology stops car theft… try stealing a Tesla car… it reports where it is, you can’t use a supercharger, etc.
And the murder rate is so low that most cities no longer even have a dedicated homicide squad. The solve rate is particularly low and police often hide the numbers by reclassifying murders into “drug related” or “mob/gang related” categories.
Can I suggest that you look up an episode on policing in the US… “You are wrong about… Murder” if you want a general introduction. As I have pointed out on here, there is no statistical correlation between crime and reported crime (and I have explained that before on here.) The statistical correlation is between crime and apprehension. But I’ve been a proponent for a long time of making our police more personal, less army-like and clearly making them understand that they have to lead by example. And we really really really need a civilian oversight board. And we need to stop punishing police with paid time off or vacation time. In fact, I pointed out just a few weeks ago about a policeman who was paid his salary for 3 years while doing NOTHING and who’s now asking to be re-instated.
Ephraim 22:36 on 2020-10-16 Permalink
BTW, think of this as the Pareto’s principle question. At what point are we wasting money, versus getting better (or effective) results. Especially when we have a limited budget.
Jebediah Pallindrome 23:36 on 2020-10-16 Permalink
You’re all right, and I am wrong. I apologize.
walkerp 08:54 on 2020-10-17 Permalink
It’s worse than just a waste of money. This squad was formed specifically in response to a report that said they were profiling. They did this to generate statistics and create a false narrative that there was an increase in gun crime and that it was mainly done by people of colour so they could justify their ongoing racist practices.