What can cops do?
TVA asks what police can do against the recent spate of violence, although making much of 16 homicides so far this year is unnecessary drama.
Looking at the list of North American cities by population, and considering cities of comparable numbers: Houston had 61 homicides in the first quarter of the year and are pleased that the number has dropped. Toronto had 16 homicides by March 18. As for Philadelphia, there were 87 reported homicides by April 30 and they too are pleased that the numbers are down.
Interestingly, the retired cop interviewed by TVA says cops couldn’t do a thing, as “ce sont des situations absolument exceptionnelles, imprévisibles ou peu prévisibles.”
Patrick Lagacé also enumerates the recent homicides and analyzes them.
And of course, talk about more police.
CE 22:06 on 2024-05-23 Permalink
Philadelphia is a good US city to compare to Montreal. it’s similar in size and density. They’ve had over 5 times the homicides we’ve had this year. Once I was visiting Baltimore (which is about a third the size of Montreal in population) and was reading the local alt weekly which had a rundown of the week’s murders. They had had more murders that week than Montreal had the entire year before!
Ian 13:02 on 2024-05-24 Permalink
It’s difficult to directly compare American cities to Canadian cities with comparable population for violent crime rates for a number of reasons. Most American cities have more racial segregation, more class stratification & more gun crime in general.
Philadelphia has been high crime for many decades, but Baltimore? You can’t even begin to compare Montreal to Baltimore. I mean, did you even see “The Wire”? I’ve been there, it really looks like that. Give me a holler when there are police helicopters hovering over specific neighbourhoods with searchlights every night of the week. People here think the Village is bad, and yeah, it is, but it’s nothing like what crack did to Baltimore.
qatzelok 18:05 on 2024-05-24 Permalink
Of the 20 most dangerous cities on Earth for murder, 10 of them are in the USA, Latin America or the Caribbean. Turtle Island is deadly.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/243797/ranking-of-the-most-dangerous-cities-in-the-world-by-murder-rate-per-capita/
Ephraim 12:16 on 2024-05-25 Permalink
Honestly, murder as a jurisdiction should be moved from the SPVM to the SQ. It’s too specialized a domain to have to duplicate it on each and every city. You have people who may not be sufficiently trained to do this kind of work in smaller police forces and a balance of specialization and budgets. Moving detectives to a central authority for the province means that they can be moved from jurisdiction to jurisdiction as needed. Because let’s be realistic, the beat cop who pushes the traffic light button and the cop who’s looking for the BMW turning left with no turn signal, isn’t going to help a detective dealing with murders. And what happens if the murder happens in Chateauguay or even St-Hubert, what experience do they have in dealing with murders?