Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada says the city's police officers will soon be equipped with body cameras. “It protects citizens, protects the police, and helps improve transparency,” she said.
City to equip 3,500 officers with body cameras along with 600 police vehicles
Hayley Carolan · CBC News
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Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada says the city's police officers will soon be equipped with body cameras.
“It protects citizens, protects the police and helps improve transparency,” Martinez Ferrada said at a news conference Friday.
She made the announcement alongside Montreal police Chief Fady Dagher and the president of the police brotherhood, Yves Francoeur.
The city will equip 3,500 police officers with body cameras and approximately 600 patrol vehicles with vehicular cameras and automated licence plate readers.
Martinez Ferrada said the cameras will provide an objective record of police interventions.
She said the first cameras could take up to a year to be seen on police officers, with a progressive deployment of the equipment to follow.
Martinez Ferrada set aside $40 million for body cameras in her first municipal budget last January.
As well, the mayor says the city plans to adopt a rule banning insults toward city employees, including police.
If adopted, the bylaw would give police new powers to issue fines for someone who insults them or another municipal employee.
Cameras on heels of racism allegations
The move comes as the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) aims to build community trust following allegations of racial profiling by a group of officers in the city’s north end.
The allegations involving officers in the city’s Montréal-Nord borough were made public in June, when Dagher revealed that 16 officers at Station 39 were being investigated for racist and hateful acts allegedly committed against Black and Arab people during police stops.
The mayor said Friday that the city's public security commission would launch an independent investigation into the allegations at Station 39.
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“Body cameras aren't a miracle response, but it’s one of the tools that’s going to bring a lot more transparency in the way we work,” Dagher said Friday.
“We’re going to be able to have a video image from both sides.”
He said that body cameras would be one of several tools to improve police interventions, including more comprehensive training and changes to how officers are recruited.
He noted that police officers will not be able to choose when the cameras are recording and that they must be on from the beginning to the end of each intervention.
WATCH | Mayor says move will improve police transparency: Montreal police will soon be equipped with body cameras, mayor says August 21| Duration 2:18
Rémi Boivin, a criminology professor at Université de Montréal, said the cameras will help make police interactions more transparent and hold officers accountable.
But he stressed it won't solve all of the problems facing Montreal police.
"It sends a good message," Boivin told Radio-Canada's Tout un matin prior to the announcement.
He said one of the challenges will be how to manage and store the massive amount of video that will be produced, noting that the provincial government was not part of the announcement.
Years of debate
The move comes after years of pilot projects, reports and mixed messages about police body cameras in Montreal.
In 2019, a pilot project with 78 SPVM officers concluded that body cameras have little impact on interventions and present logistical challenges. At the time, then mayor Valérie Plante decided the city would not go ahead with plans to equip its officers with body cameras, saying the multimillion-dollar cost was too high.
A year later, she reversed her position and by 2024, $18.3 million of the municipal budget had been allocated to "enhance the transparency of interventions and strengthen the bond of trust with the public,” including police body cameras.
However, Plante’s administration never implemented the equipment as it waited for approval from the Quebec government.
A change made by the provincial government to the practice of police officers a few weeks ago allowed the city to purchase the recording equipment for the SPVM, according to Martinez Ferrada.
However, she says the province’s Justice Ministry does not yet have the necessary technological systems to facilitate the use of videos collected by the body cameras as proof in legal proceedings.
“What I’m saying to them is that I’m starting the process of implementing cameras, we’re going to do it in a very progressive way so I’m giving them time to do that, but I’m telling them that I’m coming with videos,” she said.
“We'll ask them to be ready to receive them and use them in the court.”
The mayor also expects the province to help with further funding of the cameras.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hayley Carolan is a journalist based in Montreal.
With files from the Canadian Press
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