Montreal police chief reveals more about what led to 7 SPVM officers getting fired

Fethi Daigel, thanks for coming in. Good morning. What led to the administrative dismissal of the five agents linked to Station 39? Well, when I was analyzing all the files, we had... Actually, what's important for the people to listen is to understand that we have four procedures going on. You have the criminal procedures going on, you have the deontology, the discipline, and the administrative. It was a bit complex because from the 12th of June and during the summer we had two other events in the month of August. I have mentioned in August that we'll come back to the population in November. We are in November right now. And when we accumulate all the proof, all the evidence, I asked to re-evaluate the accreditation, the security accreditation of the police officers, and when the committee sat and re-evaluated, do we still give them those accreditations, it was a no. As soon as it was a no for the police law, the Article 115 allowed me. To take away that accreditation. When you take it away, that means you're not a police officer anymore in SPVM. So that's why we fired them. What about the two who worked at Station 21? Is this linked to allegations of urinating on a homeless person? Yes or no? That allegation, like I mentioned publicly, we don't have that kind of file in our system. So your police officer urinating on the homeless person. We don't have that file. That's why the Minister of Security asked the BEI to investigate on it. But people want to know if it's from Station 21, if it's that officer who was fired. Well, I'm not going to go into details, but like I said yesterday, five of the seven are from Station 29, and two... Right. What about the one of the agents that you fired? Was it connected to allegations of destroyed evidence in an intimate partner violence case? Again, I'm not going to go into details, but again, I mentioned all those allegations concerning discrimination, racism, vulnerable community. community. These are the seven police officers that we fire. But you understand why I'm asking that question, because the public has heard all of these allegations. They've heard all of these cases. They've heard all these investigations going on. And they do want to know if it's specifically those folks being officers who are fired. I'm going to answer you differently, because I want to make sure I'm not bypassing any step or I don't want to cross any line, just to make sure that everything goes well at the court. But all the news that you heard, On the media, concerning 39 and 21, these are the people who get fired. There's no new files. These are the files that are on the news. So it is those folks. It is those officers. You say that. I'm asking you. I'm telling you, whatever it was on the news and all those allegations that we sent to the criminal court, these are the people we fired. Yesterday, you talked about the 99% of police officers in the SPVM who were not like those officers, the ones you fired. Why did you want to highlight that? It was extremely important because, first of all, we have one of the best... The annual report in the history of the SPVM for the last 15 years, we never had that kind of result, and it came from those 99%. And plus, all the events that we're talking about, all the people that we just fired, the information, most of them, the majority of them, came from the inside. So it was a denunciation coming from the police officers. So those police officers are... Also, not only the population, but also them. They were expecting, they were waiting to see some result. How do you know it's 1% of officers and not a systemic problem? Well, I'm going to give you a great example. We just hired 1,000, 1,100 police officers for the last three years and a half. And on those, from the beginning, from June to now, we still have those seven files. When you think about it, it's even under 1%. When you think about it, I have 4,000 police officers. 1% of 4,000 police officers is around 40 people. I don't see, and we've been digging and digging and digging to find out other stories. Those kind of stories, I'm very specific, those kind of allegations, we didn't find any more after six, seven months. Could there be more? I can't answer a hypothetical question like that. You don't know. We don't know what's going to happen in one month, two years. I have no idea. But I can tell you one thing. Under the radar, I don't have that kind of cases in front of me. What do you say to people who have been waiting years? to rebuild trust. You said yesterday, again, that trust is not going to be rebuilt tomorrow. You said something to that effect in June when you were here. There are people, Mr. Degas, who have been waiting years for that trust to be rebuilt. Decades. Decades. They've been waiting decades. I've been seeing social media posts about people making reference to the 80s. What do you say to those people? Well, I can say that, listen, if there's a history of no punishment, no consequences, well, what they heard yesterday, It was a historical, it was historic what I mentioned yesterday, but it never been done in Montreal police, being fired seven people at the same time. And I don't do it only for the trust. It was the file that I have. It was the proof that I have. So after that, I know the trust has been fragile. And I'm very well aware. So we're going to rebuild it one day at a time. But when it comes to show the example, I think yesterday we showed them one of the examples. And it's not done. We're not done yet. We have other projects we're going to do, an action plan that we're going to co-build with the community concerning what kind of police they want, especially in Section 39. But how many action plans is that now? Because the community has seen action plan after action plan as well. But you know, I don't think the community ever, Let's talk about training for a second. How do you make sure that new recruits or future recruits aren't committing similar hateful, racist or derogatory acts? Well, one thing that we, when we find out about those files, right away I ask, this is what, this is part of the action plan that we are going to pull out at the end of November or December, how we revise our criteria for the recruitment, how do we train them, how do we evaluate, how do we promote our police officers, all those issues are going to be addressed. And also, at the same time, I want to make sure that some part of the culture of the police stays, because magnificent good work is being done by police officers, and I think I have to encourage my police officers to continue those 99%. But to target—and I'm going to give you an example. I'm going to give you one of the issues that we have, because people are telling me, how can you guarantee us this will not happen again? A human being is extremely difficult to evaluate the behavior of a human being when he's 17 years old, when he's 22, when he's 28, when he's 35. So we have to do introspections in our force to see how we can be better. Before you go, it's a time for a public inquiry into Montreal police. Well, I'm going to let the... There are calls for it. I'm going to let the ministers and the cities and all those people decide. I'm not in, how you say, in a position to decide for that because I'm part of the issue. Let my bosses decide whatever they want and we'll follow it. Do you still have the confidence of the mayor and Montrealers to lead Montreal Police? I think so, yeah. What happens to the seven officers? Can they work and apply to be police officers elsewhere? That's a great question. Yesterday, you asked me the same question at the press conference. And I mentioned that when they're going to be trying to be be hired somewhere else. Well, they're going to have to pass the interview and the test, and they have the obligation to mention that they were like investigated, there were some charges against them, they were fired from the Montreal police. They have the obligation. They can't lie on that. Right. And as soon as they're going to mention that, I don't think it's going to be possible. Right. And they're fired. Do they get any compensation or they're out and that's it? None. Thanks for joining us this morning. Pleasure.