Not a dangerous city: Boisvert
Yves Boisvert holds that Montreal is not a dangerous city: without minimizing the pain of people who’ve lost friends or family to violence, he points out that the city is safer now than it was at many points in the 20th century, and much safer than most other North American cities of its size – and that the idea of urban danger is being politicized.
PO 12:08 on 2021-12-04 Permalink
I always wish I knew how many of the annual homicides are events between people who knew each other, versus random murders. I guess it sounds bad, but if half of the murders are planned hits between competing crime families or something like that, well none of those make the city feel any less safe.
Kate 12:18 on 2021-12-04 Permalink
Most murders here fall into two categories: domestic, and gangs. The odds of being randomly killed are very low but occasional mistaken or random killings do happen.
This isn’t to say that domestic or gang killings are OK, more that most of the time, the police have no doubt about the motivation for a killing.
Meezly 11:14 on 2021-12-05 Permalink
Maybe not dangerous due to less crime, but what about infrastructure, design safety and disaster response? The majority of us have a greater chance of being killed by a motor vehicle than another person, or falling on ice, or having a piece of concrete or branch fall on us. Or contracting a disease. True safety is about not feeling like you might die or get Covid going to the supermarket. Frankly, I’m more worried about my mortality due to not having a family doctor for years than being murdered by my partner (for now).
Measuring the danger level of a city only based on violent crime seems so archaic. Nowadays it’s about how resilient a city is against climate disaster, Covid mortality rates and the health system, traffic and infrastructure safety. You look at the benchmarking tools used by sites like the Economist and there are so many factors that take higher priority to make a city safe than the prevention of violent crime.
Kate 19:13 on 2021-12-05 Permalink
Boisvert was mostly addressing the gun issue, and the uses being made of it politically. The full picture of mortality in Montreal is another matter!
carswell 10:56 on 2021-12-06 Permalink
And yet this morning’s lede story — above the fold, as it were — on La Presse is Des montréalais qui s’arment. The first paragraph already tips you off that the headline’s misleading: it’s a “minority” of individuals, none of whom are named, in northeast Montreal. I expect this kind of alarmism from PKP media but, reporting like this has me beginning to to suspect that at least some at La Presse have bought into the CAQiste Montreal-is-evil myth.
carswell 11:09 on 2021-12-06 Permalink
Let’s also note that La Presse’s article, which will certainly encourage some to look into arming themselves, comes on the anniversary of the Polytechnique shootings. Such class and sensitivity.
Meezly 11:18 on 2021-12-06 Permalink
“En réalité, Montréal est – de loin – une des grandes villes les plus sécuritaires en Amérique du Nord et au Canada et qui a rarement été aussi sécuritaire depuis un demi-siècle.”
Yes, Boivert’s point was the obsession and politization of gun crime to inject more funding into possibly needless policing.
But I wish he was more clear in this statement by making it clear that it’s the safest city in terms of homicide rates and reference the data he’s basing this claim on. He may have been referring to this data, which again, is horribly misleading because it’s ONLY based on homicide rates: https://www.montrealinternational.com/en/news/montreal-safest-city-among-20-major-cities-in-canada-and-the-united-states/
However, if you start expanding the criteria, like this report, which considers low crime rates, public trust in police, police assess and response, Montreal falls to 8th place: https://www.universitymagazine.ca/the-safest-cities-in-canada-2021/
Ok not bad so far, but then if you consider public safety more holistically, like support systems, infrastructures, inclusiveness, a more “whole-of-city” approach to safety, then Montreal isn’t even in the top 60 safest cities in the world. For some reason, Toronto is in the top spot, but that’s not my point. What makes a safe city should be much more than homicide rates.
And safety is also very relative. Quebec City is ranked the safest city in Canady by University Magazine, but is Quebec City just as safe for Muslims? And rarely does this kind of data consider sexual assault and harassment, or racialized intimidation and violence, why is this? Montreal could be the rape capital of Canada, yet it’s still “safe” because not many people are getting killed.