Wave of extortions hits city bars
A wave of bar extortion attempts has been noticed in various spots around the city.
Although nobody wanted to name the bar that was shot at on Mont‑Royal recently, and over which there have been arrests, the photo in this article makes it clear.
walkerp 09:41 on 2025-05-09 Permalink
A Tec-9?! Holy shit and we are worried about Fentanyl.
Great job SPVM in making sure those anarchists don’t break any windows while allowing this shit to run wild.
Nicholas 09:59 on 2025-05-09 Permalink
What’s with the media tiptoeing around the name so much? A story on the first day said corner Pontiac at 2:45 am Thursday night, there was only one match. The shooters know the bar, the victims do, the owners do, anyone who walked east from the metro saw the caution tape. What’s the point?
Kate 10:15 on 2025-05-09 Permalink
Nicholas, I’ve commented on this before. The media don’t often tell you which business has been shot at or made the target of a firebomb. They’re usually vague about it, mentioning a street name and including a nearby intersection if you’re lucky. I’ve noticed this a lot while updating the incident map. Sometimes all I can do is pin an intersection.
In newspapers from the early to mid 20th century you’ll see that places and people were always identified, giving names and personal addresses in many cases, but that policy has changed completely in our time, probably in response to advice from lawyers.
I’ve noticed that QMI sometimes gets around this by posting photos that include a sign or otherwise make it clear which business (and in some cases which residential building) has received negative attention, but the other media here tend to be cautious.
CE 10:56 on 2025-05-09 Permalink
The difference between newspapers in the 20th century and news sites on the internet is that when someone or a place was named, you would read it and either store it in your memory or not, depending on how much you cared. The paper would go in the garbage and be forgotten. You could bring up the story again by going to the library and looking through the archives but for the most part, the story was gone after the day it was reported.
On the internet, everything is immediately put in a super searchable archive that is easily available to anyone. Beyond that, all keywords in a story now pop up in any search engine search that uses those words. So, if Bar ABC has been the backdrop of a major crime, any time someone searches “Bar ABC” to get its address or reviews or anything else, that story about the major crime will appear too. If I were someone who was involved in a salacious news story (either as a participant or bystander) I would rather not be named because otherwise, any time my name is searched, I would be associated with the incident.
Kate 11:49 on 2025-05-09 Permalink
A cromulent riposte, CE.
Kevin 20:05 on 2025-05-09 Permalink
I believe this is due to budget cuts. Last century there would have been reporters going to these overnight events with the goal of writing stories.
Now a news organization is lucky to have a camera person there, if not they may pay a freelancer for an image. But getting the information including address is beyond their paygrade and/or skillset.
Kate 09:41 on 2025-05-10 Permalink
My impression has been that the info comes from a police bulletin, because quite often the different media that report incidents – mostly TVA and CTV, sometimes Radio‑Canada/CBC – will describe the location in exactly the same words, even if the emphasis of the reports are a little different. Sometimes the photo illustrating the story is a banal generic photo of a police car because the web template requires a picture, but that’s all they have.