Updates from March, 2022 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Kate 19:03 on 2022-03-07 Permalink | Reply  

    An SPVM policeman has been suspended for one month over an unlawful arrest more than five years ago.

    I can’t quite make out this account: “Deriveaux was filming the scene [of a cop chasing another man] … when the man who was being chased got away. That’s when [the cop] approached him and said he had no right to show and demanded he hand over his identification.”

    I don’t know what “right to show” means, but the upshot was that Wilguens Deriveaux was thrown to the ground and accused of obstructing the police and causing a disturbance.

    Question: Why does it take incidents like this five years to reach a conclusion?

     

    • Ephraim 20:01 on 2022-03-07 Permalink

      My guess… they meant “to film”. Which he certainly does, but the Police always try to suggest that we don’t.

      Matthew Cool, incidentally is mentioned https://deontologie-policiere.gouv.qc.ca/commissaire/publications/actualites/detail-des-communiques/policier-puni-en-deontologie-policiere-pour-avoir-donne-des-coups-de-poing-a-un-citoyen.html so it’s definitely not his first time at the commission… and it’s clear that he had received a 10 day suspension without pay.

      And if you look it up, he was deposed on the 5th, 6th, and 9th of September 2019, the 9th, 10th and 11th of October 2019 on dossier C-2016-5015-3

    • Kate 20:37 on 2022-03-07 Permalink

      Ephraim, don’t police have fairly wide discretion when it comes to deciding what constitutes obstruction?

    • Ephraim 22:41 on 2022-03-07 Permalink

      Is filming on the sidewalk actually obstruction? The police constantly want to make people think that you don’t have a right to film… you ALWAYS have a right to film… you may not have a right to post it publicly… but you definitely have a right to film.

      In our system the real discretion is supposed to be in the hands of the prosecutor. Sure, the police have discretion, but are they really supposed to have it or is it a function of having too many unenforceable laws? The speed limit of 40 km/h in the city is an example… should the police be writing tickets for all the cars exceeding the 40 km/h limit? We have them use their discretion because if they didn’t, they would spend all day writing speeding tickets… because it’s unenforceable. So they use their discretion and don’t bother writing any. But they are officers of the law, they should be upholding all the laws, not just the ones that they want to uphold.

      Still waiting to see a single person actually being arrested for credit card fraud, for example. And you have to be pretty stupid to get arrested for burglary, because the cops don’t usually even bother looking, they just take a report so you can file with your insurance. I still wonder how much of a policeman’s job could be replaced by fillable PDF files.

    • Ephraim 22:48 on 2022-03-07 Permalink

      Sorry, forgot to mention another example of discretion on the part of the police…

      Say you see a crime at 4:45PM and your end of day is 5:00PM, do you do the arrest or not? Depends on the police force. If you are able to collect overtime, you do it, because it’s a great way to get extra pay. But if you are unable to collect overtime, you may decide that you didn’t see it, because you won’t have time for the paperwork, or you don’t want to bother getting home late.

      But a crime is a crime. The time shouldn’t be a function of criminality. In the US, it is often used as a way to fleece the system… in fact, prosecutors have complained that often arrests near the end of duty aren’t prosecuted because they know that police make arrests close to that time to get overtime and the cases aren’t good enough to prosecute. And it’s a function of area, as well… they will purposefully go through a neighbourhood with POC in order to find a crime (or rather create a crime) to get this overtime. There is a discussion of this on an older PodCast of “You’re Wrong About” as well as elsewhere.

    • Andrew 12:34 on 2022-03-08 Permalink

      I figured out “right to show” … it’s so bad.

      Gazette has that part of the story as a quote from the report: “Constable Cool approached Deriveaux, told him he did not have a right to yell (…)”

      I was trying to think of a translation error when I realised CTV meant to put “shout”

      ooof

  • Kate 18:50 on 2022-03-07 Permalink | Reply  

    Probably most of you will have already heard about anti-racism minister Benoit Charette’s gaffe at the Dynastie Gala on Saturday: Charette was speaking about Black artists who had died over the last year and named, among others, Lamine Touré – who was in the audience. Touré is the owner of Club Balattou.

    Charette was also introduced by parliamentary assistant Christopher Skeete as the “minister of racism.”

     

    • Kate 14:47 on 2022-03-07 Permalink | Reply  

      Not everyone is thrilled with the news that several new police security cameras will be placed in park playgrounds. CBC tried unsuccessfully to get information from the SPVM about whether existing police cameras had been demonstrably useful in reducing crime. Without facts it’s difficult to know whether these cameras might simply be theatre meant to show the public that something’s being done.

       

      • steph 15:39 on 2022-03-07 Permalink

        With crime rates at their highest ever, I’m glad they’re thinking of the children first. Body cameras would only hurt the public.

      • Kate 15:42 on 2022-03-07 Permalink

        Car 19-3! Car 19-3! A small boy has been pushed off the seesaw in Nelson Mandela park. Suspect is blonde girl, 1.2 meters tall, approximate age seven. She may be armed with a stick. Approach with caution!

      • Dominic 16:04 on 2022-03-07 Permalink

        Maybe this will stop kids from playing dice in parks, so the cops don’t have to shoot them dead

      • Ephraim 16:16 on 2022-03-07 Permalink

        steph – Where are you hearing that crime rates are at their highest ever? Crime is low. Well… okay, at least reported crime is low. The murder rate is extremely low.

      • DeWolf 18:22 on 2022-03-07 Permalink

        Crime rates are not at their highest levels ever. Not even close.

      • dhomas 18:33 on 2022-03-07 Permalink

        Preeeetty sure that was sarcasm on Steph’s part.

      • steph 19:03 on 2022-03-07 Permalink

        it was sarcasm. I thought it was obvious.
        The cameras are uncalled for. What we need are body cameras on copss

      • Ian 22:49 on 2022-03-07 Permalink

        What we need are body cameras on ̶c̶o̶p̶s̶s̶ civilians to record the cops

    • Kate 14:36 on 2022-03-07 Permalink | Reply  

      An opinion piece in Le Devoir defends the many new construction sites we’ve seen downtown since 2008, roughly. Bruno Collin makes the point that the city core was full of empty lots in the 1980s, and that the new construction fulfills an urban densification plan initially conceived during the Doré administration in 1990.

      What Collin fails to do is explain why he thinks the design of the latest crop of condo buildings is better than, or sets itself apart from, buildings put up in the 1960s and 1970s by “des investisseurs étrangers insensibles à la qualité architecturale d’une ville qu’ils ne connaissaient même pas.” Most of the new buildings are the typical highrise condo buildings found in any city from Guangzhou to Dubai. There’s nothing especially distinctive about any of them.

       

      • MarcG 17:23 on 2022-03-07 Permalink

        I watched a documentary called Cities Held Hostage last night, it’s an interesting and depressing look at Montreal’s development over the years. https://gem.cbc.ca/media/absolutely-canadian/s17e03

      • DeWolf 18:34 on 2022-03-07 Permalink

        Even an ugly apartment building is better than a parking lot.

        According to the 2021 census, Montreal has the second fastest growing downtown population in Canada. That’s a good thing. There are huge tracts of land that were just empty 15 years ago that are now filled with people and businesses. Some of the new construction is ugly, some of it is nice, but if we’re too precious about these things we’ll end up with a moribund city. We certainly don’t want to end up like San Francisco, where it’s almost impossible to get anything built, despite some of the most expensive housing in the world.

      • DeWolf 18:41 on 2022-03-07 Permalink

        Forgot to add a link to the StatCan report about downtown growth:

        https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220209/dq220209b-eng.htm

        “The most populated downtowns were Toronto (275,931 people), Vancouver (121,932 people), Montréal (109,509 people), Ottawa (67,169 people) and Edmonton (55,387 people).

        (…)

        The downtown of Halifax grew at the fastest pace (+26.1%) from 2016 to 2021. In several of Canada’s largest urban centres, the downtowns also showed very robust population growth, namely in Montréal (+24.2%), Calgary (+21.0%) and Toronto (+16.1%).”

      • Kate 20:30 on 2022-03-08 Permalink

        Thanks for the numbers, DeWolf.

      • Robert H 12:11 on 2022-03-09 Permalink

        Je me plains aussi de la qualité de ce qui est construit, dont le pire est le Dorchester sur le boulevard René Levesque. Le piéton ou l’automobiliste qui s’approche en direction de l’ouest verra un mur aveugle de 37 étages. Mais je crois aussi que chaque chantier est un vote de confiance dans le centre-ville. D’autres villes luttent pour atteindre le niveau d’activité économique dont jouit Montréal. Mais il est certain que, comme le centre-ville devient de plus en plus résidentiel, les promoteurs doivent à la ville plus d’attention et de soin dans le raffinement et la conception des nouveaux bâtiments.

    • Kate 10:10 on 2022-03-07 Permalink | Reply  

      Elementary and high school students can go to sit in class without masks as of Monday.

      Some immunocompromised people think they’re being forgotten by government as Covid restrictions vanish this month and next. Concern has also been expressed for immunocompromised students.

      Aaron Derfel has a twitter thread assessing the current state of play from a scientific point of view. Summed up: politicians want it to be over, but science says hold up.

       

      • Mark Côté 10:26 on 2022-03-07 Permalink

        They don’t have to wear masks in class; they still have to wear them to class (in hallways, etc.)..

        Given they were allowed to remove them to eat several times a day I did wonder how effective masks were; however, my bigger wonder is why so many restrictions are being removed in such a short time.

      • Kate 10:29 on 2022-03-07 Permalink

        Thanks for the clarification, Mark Côté.

      • Joey 11:19 on 2022-03-07 Permalink

        There’s something to be said for being vaxxed and relaxxed, at least in between variants of concern, no? Hard to square with the legitimate needs of the immunocomprimised, parents of kids under five, those who can’t get vaccinated, etc., of course. But I increasingly see the value of being able to quickly ramp up and, importantly, ramp down public health restrictions. Then again, governments all over the world seem to really struggle with the idea that you should be simultaneously ending restrictions and preparing for future waves – though the relatively low uptake in booster doses reveals a lot about individual preferences (not me: I *love* vaccines). Hopefully the combo of boosters, RATs and anti-virals will blunt whatever nightmares SARS-COV-2 has in store for us. Surely the Pi variant will arrive next Monday, March 14…

        (PS: I found Derfel’s twitter thread, as is customary, to be a over the top. All the headlines he cited as being reckless were somewhat balanced, no?)

      • Chris 11:10 on 2022-03-08 Permalink

        >my bigger wonder is why so many restrictions are being removed in such a short time

        Because 1) the hospitals are emptied out and 2) people want to live normally again.

      • Mark Côté 11:23 on 2022-03-08 Permalink

        Dunno if I’d call hospitals “emptied out” with 1200+ people still in there with covid…

      • j2 11:46 on 2022-03-08 Permalink

        oh great you’re back

        We are about 2/3 the amount from peak values in hospitalizations and less than half for ICU patients. Given 2/3rds ICU patients – IIUC – are unvaccinated what Chris says might be true if we dumped the unvaccinated on the street. It’s true at least the ICU staff are no longer handling multiple patients at the same time, which represents compromised care for very vulnerable people.

        Chris is absolutely right people are done with it, however, which is plain just watching people. Goodwill wasted on slapdash bad government health theatre. Unfortunately the disease doesn’t care how you feel and we’ve squandered a lot of time which we could have used to improve ventilation and other measures in preparation for more serious variants and also for everyday health.

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