Difference between revisions of "Service de police de la Ville de Montréal"

Revision as of 06:51, May 5, 2021

The Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM; in English, the City of Montreal Police Service) is the police force in the city of Montreal, Quebec and in neighboring communities within the Greater Montreal area.

The SPVM was established on March 15, 1843 with an initial staff of 51 officers. By early in the 20th century, the number of staff in the SPVM grew to 467 and remained steady until 1930, in the wake of the Wall Street Crash and the start of the Great Depression in 1929, when more officers were hired to counteract the rise in crime during that period. The SPVM grew to about 1,500 employees by the late 1930s.

As of 2019, the SPVM employs 4,652 officers and 1,356 civilian staff. Sylvain Caron is the current SPVM Director, equivalent to a Chief of Police in other police forces elsewhere.

Controversy

While, like other police departments, the SPVM has had its share of accusations of police brutality against it over time (particularly by leftist university students during the 2012 student "protests" in Quebec, who whined about being dealt with by the SPVM and other police departments when the "protesters" engaged in lawless behavior and mocked the force), a recent turn to the Left by many of its officers, coupled with a disturbing trend in the rise of actual incidents of police brutality and anti-Semitic attitudes displayed by those same officers, has led to the SPVM now being legitimately accused of the same behaviors (all caught on-camera and documented) that they once were mocked for several years earlier; in fact, Rebel News speculated that based on reported recent incidents involving them, the SPVM may be rife with corruption, perhaps even the most corrupt police force in Canada.^[1] Some of those recent incidents in question are detailed below:

• In Montreal during March and early-April 2021, anti-CCP flu lockdown protesters who peacefully protested the imposed lockdowns, as well as Rebel News reporters and staff, were subjected to illegal harassment and Gestapo-style tactics by the SPVM, who made arrests against the protesters and the reporters on false charges^[2] and made anti-Semitic slurs against the Rebel News staff and threatened them with illegal fines^[3] for not wearing masks, even though media reporters are legally exempt from mask diktats.^[4] The SPVM was also criticized for targeting children who took part in the anti-lockdown protests.^[5] Mocha Bezirgan, a Rebel News videographer, pointed out that the illegal arrests and fines imposed by the SPVM, along with their police brutality incidents, are not about the masks (as some of the SPVM officers were not wearing masks themselves), but about intimidation of those attempting to stand up for their rights and against unconstitutional diktats and illegal behavior by the diktats' enforcers.^[6] In addition, the SPVM also came under fire for anti-Semitic targeting and harassment of Montreal's Hasidic Jewish community while using the pandemic, as well as the recent introduction of an 8:00 p.m. curfew in the city, as its justification for same.^[7]

• On April 10, 2021, heavily-armed SPVM officers staged a warrantless raid on an Airbnb location and illegally arrested and falsely charged several Rebel News reporters, including David Menzies and Keean Bexte, who were in Montreal to cover the anti-lockdown protests in the city; in addition to disregarding being told that their raid was illegal, the officers also falsely claimed that the hotel where the reporters were staying was a "crime scene", even though no crime had been committed.^[8] Rebel News head Ezra Levant reported that the police raid on the hotel was vindictive revenge by the SPVM in response to Rebel News reporting on and publicizing the police force's misconduct (including incidents of assault and anti-Semitism by officers that were caught on-camera) and announced that there are plans to sue the SPVM for its illegal harassment of the Rebel News staff. It was later reported that there had been attempts by the SPVM to get warrants to search the hotel the Rebel News staff was staying at prior to the raid, but they had been denied by numerous judges on the grounds that the hotel was not the location of an "illegal gathering", confirming the illegality of the SPVM's actions.^[1]

• On the weekend of April 24, 2021, the Montreal Hasidic Jewish community was again targeted with anti-Semitic bigotry by the SPVM under the guise of "enforcing" the CCP flu lockdown curfew in the city.^[9]

• Firas Zahabi, a mixed martial arts trainer and the operator of Tristar Gym in Montreal, reported that the SPVM had raided his gym 16 times despite his efforts to comply with CCP flu regulations, and that their confrontations with and harassment of Zahabi had become increasingly aggressive over time.^[10]

• Rebel News videographer Yaakov Pollak, who is Jewish, reported being frequently targeted by the SPVM during his coverage of its anti-Semitic targeting of the Montreal Hasidic Jewish community, stating that he had been stopped by SPVM officers nearly 50 times and was illegally ticketed at least 12 times as well as being illegally threatened with fines for filming the SPVM's wrongdoing, bigotry, corruption and power trips against the public (including their levying of illegal fines and refusal to respect medical exemptions from face mask wearing, all targeting local Jewish people);^[11] SPVM officers also refused to speak to Rebel News when confronted about their unjust actions against a Jewish family returning home after the local 8:00 p.m. curfew took effect, with David Menzies noting through implication that the SPVM's demands for people's identification papers when confronting members of the public is very similar to what the Nazis did against German Jews during the Nazi regime in Germany.

• In another case of anti-Semitic targeting, SPVM officers ignored curfew exemption notes held by Orthodox Jewish students on their way home from evening classes and illegally ticketed the students, claiming (in ignorance and violation of the Quebec government's list of accepted exemptions) that the notes were "insufficient" and that the students also needed student IDs and class schedules.^[12] When asked about the incidents by Rebel News, the SPVM refused to comment specifically about them, instead only releasing a pre-prepared press release.

References