Montréal, May 15, 2023 – As new SPVM director Fady Dagher presents his vision for the SPVM at a Monday morning press conference, a coalition of Montreal community groups are criticizing his vision and calling for a new approach to public safety in the city.
The community groups are part of the Defund the Police Coalition, a network of 80 groups committed to changing the current approach to public safety. This approach, according to the Coalition, overemphasizes the role of the police while either underfunding or failing to fund the various community services and projects that have shown to prevent violence and other safety issues.
While Dagher’s vision of policing is often described as new and even “avant garde,” the Coalition suggests it is no different than the status quo. Since becoming director, Dagher has not only reiterated the false claim that the SPVM needs 450 more police officers but also increased the number of missing officers to 750. He has also reiterated mythical claims about police “disengagement” (supposedly attributable to the filming of police interventions and the Black Lives Matter movement) and argued that the police need to be more present in the community and an integral part of the “village” that raises Montreal children.
The Coalition also rejects the idea that Dagher’s “community” approach to policing will address problems of racial and social profiling. Montréal has been practicing “community policing” since the 1980s, and the most tangible (and well-documented) result has been to increase racial and social profiling. As commander of the police station in Saint-Michel in the 2000s, Dagher introduced many community initiatives but also allowed or encouraged the highest rate of racial profiling ever recorded. Between 2006 and 2008, around 40% of Black men in Saint-Michel were stopped by police. More recently, as director of the Longueuil police, Dagher refused a court order to release racial data on police interventions, and since becoming SPVM director he has refused to release a report on police racial profiling conducted by three researchers.
With or without Dagher, the Coalition argues, Montreal needs an approach to public safety that deemphasizes the role of police, partially defunds the police, and reinvests public money in a range of community services and projects.
Three members of the Coalition will be watching Dagher’s press conference on Monday morning and invite the media to contact them for comments.
Media contacts:
Sandra Wesley, Stella, l’amie de Maimie, (514) 984-6319
Tari Ajadi, McGill University, (514) 398-2593
France Stohner, Centre Kapwa, (514) 649-9299
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