Adding 450 cops is not going to be easy
Adding 450 cops to the SPVM may be a political talking point, but it won’t be easy: for starters, you have to replace a cohort of people on the brink of retirement first, and then a lot of young cops don’t want to work in Montreal because it’s more challenging than a gig wandering around a peaceful town or suburb somewhere in a cruiser. And police are quitting, too.
But if we can force doctors to work in the regions, blocking them from building a practice in the city, why can’t we do the opposite with police? Force them to do years of work in the big city before they can accumulate the seniority needed to go eat donuts and chivvy missing cows in St‑Glinglin?
steph 09:08 on 2022-08-31 Permalink
I assumed policing attracted people who want action. City policing is probably also VERY boring with endless hours sitting in a cruiser.
Kate 09:37 on 2022-08-31 Permalink
I wonder. Some proto-cops may be attracted by the possibility of action, but a lot more may be focused on the good benefits and pension.
Em 09:42 on 2022-08-31 Permalink
I’ve heard anecdotally that part of the reason cops don’t want to work in Montreal is the prevalance of calls involving homelessness, addiction and mental health, which isn’t really what they trained for. City cops also face a lot more scrutiny and probably hostility.
Ephraim 10:58 on 2022-08-31 Permalink
We really should look at taking away the jobs that shouldn’t be done by police.
Traffic control can certainly have a civilian counterpart… never mind that the lights should be put on an automated learning system.
Social workers to handle everything beyond the basics where the cops are needed… a domestic dispute, separate them if there is abuse, hand them over to social workers. Same with the homeless. I’m sure most police don’t really like to deal with this anyway.
Finally so many of the useless police reporting can be PDF files. Robbery… you aren’t getting your stuff back, here’s a PDF for your insurance company that we will send out to all the pawn shops that are going to buy your stuff and make you pay them to get it back anyway.
And then bring back some community policing so that police get to know the people in the neighbourhood and some damn sympathy. If the police knew the people of Montreal North, they would have the connections to better understand what’s happening… and shoot less people, because it’s hard to shoot people you think of as friends and realize that their colour, their sex, their race disappears when you know them as people.
And squads like IT should be provincial, where you can afford to have money involved from all over the province. Maybe even drug squads and gangs should be provincial police territory.