COITEUX PADS INVESTIGATION
Investigators from RCMP, other cities joining investigation of Montreal force
More allegations of police corruption come to light
In light of multiple new and serious allegations of corruption against members of Montreal’s police service, Public Security Minister Martin Coiteux announced he will be beefing up the investigation he announced this week and launching a separate administrative probe into the internal workings of the SPVM.
The allegations, communicated to the minister by the Sûreté du Québec late Thursday, are so numerous, serious and complex that Coiteux has decided to add investigators from the RCMP, Quebec City, Longueuil, and Gatineau police forces to the SQ team. The investigation will now be co-directed by SQ assistant director general Yves Morency and Madeleine Giauque, the head of the Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes (BEI), an independent policeoversight agency set up in 2013.
The investigation will be looking into disturbing allegations by two former SPVM officers revealed in a TVA report Tuesday. Jimmy Cacchione and Giovanni Di Feo said they had been ousted from the police service in 2014 because they were about to blow the whistle on corruption allegations that would have hurt the reputation of thenpolice chief Marc Parent and other high-ranking officers. They alleged that the Montreal police internal affairs division made up incriminating evidence to discredit them and justify their dismissal.
A third officer, Roger Larivière, told TVA his home and office were searched by Montreal police officers in 2014, shortly after he met with a journalist at a Montreal restaurant. A report in Le Devoir Thursday suggested SQ investigators had spotted Larivière and reported the meeting to the SPVM’s internal affairs unit.
But after Coiteux announced an investigation of those allegations by an SQ team, more allegations surfaced.
“At the beginning of the week we thought we had two or three cases to investigate,” Coiteux said at a news conference Friday afternoon. “Last night it was confirmed to me the number and complexity of cases is increasing.
“This serious new information leads us to believe that above and beyond the specific treatment of certain cases, there may be systemic problems concerning the internal investigative practices of the SPVM,” he said.
“We need to make sure the investigators conducting the investigations are completely independent from the cases they are investigating, so we have to enlarge the number of investigators beyond the SQ to make sure we maintain that independence,” he said.
The minister will soon name a special commissioner to lead the administrative investigation into the SPVM’s internal workings, he said.
The minister will also ask police Chief Philippe Pichet to give a report on what measures he intends to take to ensure the problems in
the SPVM do not worsen in the short term, and to restore public confidence in his police force.
Coiteux made it clear that he has confidence in the relatively new BEI, but added this investigation is too complex and broad for the BEI to handle alone at this stage and with its current resources.
Coiteux denied that he was putting the SPVM under a kind of trusteeship through the administrative investigation he is ordering. But he avoided answering reporters’ direct questions about whether he had total confidence in the current police chief.
“He will be part of an internal investigation. He will have to respond to questions by the commissioner that I will be putting in place soon,” Coiteux said.
He said he still believes in the integrity of the majority of Montreal’s officers, but the new allegations
are “something really significant and we have to get to the bottom of this. It’s not one or two people, and this is why I am announcing not only additional capacity to the investigative team ... but at the same time we need to do an internal investigation of the SPVM.”
He said he has not ruled out a public inquiry into the SPVM’s issues in the future, but he had to take these immediate measures to deal with the situation.
“Nobody should have any doubt about the independence of this investigation,” he added.
The minister will also set up a permanent task force of police officials responsible for internal investigations of the various Quebec police services in order to share best practices. And finally, the minister will consider amending Bill 107 to ensure that certain types of allegations that undermine public confidence in police services be conferred to the BEI.
Coiteux also announced a new “info line” for SPVM officers who wish to report instances of corruption within their own force. That number, which is being staffed by SQ officers, is 514-598-4336.
Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre said he is pleased with the measures Coiteux has announced, and said he has full confidence in Pichet.
“There seems to be a systemic culture within certain services of the SPVM that require that we go deeper, and that is what we are doing,” Coderre said in a press conference two hours after the minister’s announcement. “For me, it is important to remember that when Mr. Pichet was named chief of police remember what was said about him: he was not a member of any clan ... he came with his experience and from the beginning he made structural changes and things started to come out after that. So it is normal that until we have reason not to, that we give him all our confidence.”
But the leader of the official opposition at city hall, Valérie Plante, said the measures announced by the minister fall short “because they do not attack the root of the problem, which is the culture of secrecy that reigns in the police service,” Plante said in a written statement.
“The Coderre administration must examine its conscience and take the means necessary to improve the transparency of the SPVM, and of the agency responsible for supervising its work, the Public Security Commission,” she said.