Montreal City Weblog

Kate 08:51 on 2023-11-12 Permalink Reply  

• Ariela Freedman 09:39 on 2023-11-12 Permalink

  This is terrifying. In a single week a firebombing at a synagogue and community centre, and three Jewish schools targeted with gunfire. Jews here have never been as targeted. I wish I saw people marching in the street for the safety of their friends and neighbours here.

• MarcG 17:29 on 2023-11-12 Permalink

  Yeah really not good. If we’re going to bother having cops at all they need to step up and hire people who understand the latest technology to find the trail of communication behind these events. Even a disturbed loner is leaving crumbs around on the internet somewhere.

• Blork 21:55 on 2023-11-12 Permalink

  Not to diminish the seriousness of this, but given how many young idiots are walking around with guns these days it’s possible that the shooters are just testosterone-overloaded cocksure teenage boys stirring up the pot just to watch it bubble. I’m not saying is IS, just that it MIGHT BE.

• bob 22:03 on 2023-11-12 Permalink

  I’m pretty sure that CSIS, CSE, and the RCMP are institutionally aware of these events. Political investigations are tricky. I doubt the police or anyone else will be releasing information about the investigation or what they find for a while. It’s probably just random people, but if there is anything else to it then it is likely that it would touch upon things or people the government does not want brought to light. The police have to gather their evidence without reference but with sensitivity to intelligence operations.

• bob 22:29 on 2023-11-12 Permalink

  I think that is almost certainly the case. Even so, a police investigation that looks into something politically and socially fraught will be treading very carefully, and probably coordinating with the federal government.

  Even if it is some rando(s) the implication is clear – if Israel attacks mosques and schools in Gaza, then we can attack synagogues and Jewish schools anywhere.

• Joey 10:50 on 2023-11-13 Permalink

  How many times do you get to shoot at a school before the police implement 24-hour surveillance?

• walkerp 12:47 on 2023-11-13 Permalink

  Seriously, this seems like a no-brainer.
  You kind of would hope that anybody shoots a gun at a school in this city that it would immediately go to the top of any SPVM priority list.

• Joey 12:51 on 2023-11-13 Permalink

  Especially since they had previously deployed surveillance in front of Jewish schools, but only during daytime hours (from what I could tell from my neighbourhood).

• jeather 13:01 on 2023-11-13 Permalink

  If you’re going to do surveillance not 24/7, choosing to do it when the school is in use does make the most sense. There are a lot of schools, though — I’m not sure if specific ones are going to be targeted or just the ones that are easiest. But one of the hidden costs of Judaism is paying for private security in a way a Christian school, or a church, doesn’t need to. (Not that private security is the same as the police.)

• Blork 13:33 on 2023-11-13 Permalink

  Trying to be practical here: if you put 24/7 surveillance on Jewish schools the shooters will just switch to shooting at synagogues. If you put 24/7 surveillance on all Jewish schools and synagogues, then you’re showing preferential treatment by not also putting 24/7 surveillance on Muslim schools and mosques. Do the police have the resources to put 24/7 surveillance on all Jewish and Muslim schools and places of worship? Can they justify that after just a couple of late-night shots at buildings (not people) that could very easily have been motivated by stupid adolescent hooliganism (see my comment above)? Just sayin’…

• bob 14:13 on 2023-11-13 Permalink

  Security cameras are cheap. people stick them in their doorbells. And the extra cost of extra police making sure that mosques and synagogues are safe is the price we pay for harbouring extremism and allowing Islamophobic and anti-Semitic (and racist, homophobic, etc. etc.) hate speech to be excused as “just sayin’…” “Stupid adolescent hooliganism” has a way of maturing into hate-based murder. And then the politicians are “shocked!” like Inspector Renault, and then they pocket their winnings, like Inspector Renault.

• Joey 14:18 on 2023-11-13 Permalink

  There is a difference between obvious surveillance and clandestine surveillance. The SVPM has been doing the former for a while now, with clearly marked cars parked in front of prominent locations, like schools. We assume they haven’t been doing the latter, otherwise they might have caught the people who shot up the same school twice in a few days.

  Anyway, since we don’t know whether Blork’s hunch that it’s probably just hooligans is correct AND we know that the same school has been shot at more than once (and in all cases outside of ‘obvious surveillance’ hours), presumably there is more than enough justification for temporary 24-hour clandestine surveillance of this school and other likely targets. While we may lack the resources to monitor every Jewish and Muslim school/synagogue/mosque/temple/community building, surely we can keep a few extra sets of discreet eyes on the school that has been shot twice! And if it turns out that the surveillance scares away the shooters or that they were in fact just rambunctious kids, isn’t that knowledge/resolution sufficient?

• Blork 14:38 on 2023-11-13 Permalink

  Joey makes a good point about obvious vs. clandestine surveillance. The option they use depends on their intention. If the intention is to prevent the thing from happening, then use obvious surveillance; if the intention is to catch the perpetrators, use clandestine surveillance.

  It seems clear that at the least there should be 24/7 obvious surveillance at that particular school. If it is just hooligans, then they’ll likely move on to other thrills and forget about this one. If other places start getting shot up then it might be a sign of something else (or it might just be copycats).

  My previous ‘just sayin'” comment was only about the impracticality of putting 24/7 surveillance on everything.

• Blork 14:41 on 2023-11-13 Permalink

  BTW, I doubt security cameras would do much. All that would do is show us blurry and grainy footage of somebody in the dark across the street, probably wearing a mask or a togue pulled down, taking a shot.

• Joey 15:43 on 2023-11-13 Permalink

  @Blork the point, though, is to be aware as soon as the criminal act happens so you can chase after the perps… video surveillance would be adequate to broadly ID someone for the purposes of going after them…

• Blork 16:11 on 2023-11-13 Permalink

  I’d like to think so, but if I had a dollar for every time a security video was published with an appeal to identify the perps — and then no identification were forthcoming — I’d retire early. Classic example from a month ago in Campbell River BC, where a security camera clearly videotaped three people trying to bust down the door of a house. One of them armed with a shotgun! The video is clear, the faces are partially obscured but still pretty clear. The area is not very populated, so surely SOMEBODY would recognize those three, but no. Still unresolved.

  https://globalnews.ca/news/10041889/shocking-campbell-river-b-c-attempted-home-invasion-captured-on-video/

  And that’s with clear video. How clear is the video from some guy dressed in dark clothing standing in the dark across the street from a school?

• thomas 17:03 on 2023-11-13 Permalink

  @Blork 3 suspects have been arrested in the case you reference. https://globalnews.ca/news/10079651/three-arrested-abduction-extortion-bank-campbell-river/

• Blork 18:02 on 2023-11-13 Permalink

  @thomas, you read that too fast. They arrested three people in a separate case and now they’re looking into the attempted break-in case to see if it’s connected — as in, to see if it’s the same three people. But the arrest was from catching them red-handed in the second case.