Montreal City Weblog

Kate 10:25 on 2020-12-04 Permalink Reply  

• Bill Binns 10:32 on 2020-12-04 Permalink

  I assume most remaining travel agencies are fronts for money laundering operations. The fact that they are getting attention from the local arson team seems to back that up.

• Tim S. 11:24 on 2020-12-04 Permalink

  Apartments above. Not cool. I wish the police (and media) would treat these incidents according to their potential collateral damage, and not just as underworld folks doing their thing.

• dwgs 11:38 on 2020-12-04 Permalink

  Also, Sport Au Gus to the left, a great family owned business. That travel agency is a weird thing. They only opened about a year ago. The space was renovated (nicely) and then sat unopened for at least a couple of months. During normal times I go to Gus at least once a week for skate sharpening and I never once saw a client in the travel agency.

• J 12:15 on 2020-12-04 Permalink

  @Bill I remember a lot of niche travel agencies from when I’ve visited some random travel and recreation expo. From medical tourism (dental, plastic surgeries) to themed tour groups, you name it. I personally know one small agency that used to fly a few dozen kids every summer back to Eastern Europe to visit their grandparents. Lots of travel needs not catered for by the likes of Expedia.

• Ephraim 15:42 on 2020-12-04 Permalink

  @Tim S. What are the police supposed to do about this? In order to actually do something about this, they need to have open communications with the public… but they can’t get us to trust or respect them… and you don’t pass information to those who you distrust and don’t respect. Especially in NDG, where you have anglophones, people of colour, etc.

  Using their own report… 0.72% are first nations, 4.27% are ethnic minorities and 8.05% are visible minorities. Leaving 86.96% of the force being… And in the higher ranks, it’s 90.66%. With about a third of the force being women.

  Of the 4562, just 1428 have anything beyond high school… with 1 member of the police force having a doctorate, 66 with masters and 395 with Bachelors…. leaving everyone else on short programs, certificates or “majors”.

  Of the 98880 crimes reported, 51642 of them were crimes against property (or 52%) and of those, 23879 of those were petty larceny (ie under $5000). A crime that the police basically fill out forms for.

  Just for fun… 6 people were arrested in 2019 for prostitution an entire waste of time and money. For one thing, by law it’s not really illegal… solicitation for the purposes of sex is what’s actually illegal… so do it via the net, phone or text and not in public where you can be heard. But really, how much effort has to go into actually trying to arrest someone for prostitution… is it really worth the money? Frankly, we should just make it legal and tax them properly while testing for STDs, which is the part that costs us the most money anyway.

  And there is plenty more to object to in this annual report. They claim 50K calls to 514-280-2222 as non-emergency calls… I’ve tried to call that number… they don’t answer. There are 525600 minutes in a year. So 50K calls is less than 6 an hour. It’s 3.5% of the total of all calls. But most of the calls go to 911, because, well… they don’t answer the other number. So the number is useless.

  New category in 2019, online reports. They got 10K of them. Thefts, mostly, though over 2K are lost items. And just 1.2K of them are bicycles (remember, if you don’t report it… it didn’t happen. So at 1.2K bicycle theft isn’t really a big problem… there were 4.3K car thefts. Unless they are including bicycle thefts in petty larceny, whereupon, there is none, because it’s not broken down to show it.

  https://rapportspvm2019.ca/rapport/SPVM%20Stats_2019_ANG_FINAL.pdf

• Ephraim 15:44 on 2020-12-04 Permalink

  Forgot to add, as of 2016, Montreal is 2.5% aboriginal. 34.2% visible minority.