Montreal Gazette

Chief Pichet confident amid allegation­s

Force rocked by suspension­s, new bribery allegation­s

- JESSE FEITH AND PAUL CHERRY jfeith@postmedia.com pcherry@postmedia.com

As allegation­s of corruption continue to mount against the Montreal police force, including new questions about whether some of its members were receiving bribes from the Mafia, the SPVM chief reiterated Friday that he’s confident the situation is being handled properly.

“Of course, it’s not a good time for the SPVM,” Montreal police chief Philippe Pichet said in an interview from the force’s downtown headquarte­rs. “We have a very serious situation to handle right now. I want to be informed about everything, and if I have any informatio­n that leads me to think I need to take action, I will.”

Asked about the public’s confidence in the force amid recent scandals and if he would be willing to step aside in order to ensure it — something political leaders have called for — Pichet said resigning wasn’t being considered.

“I’m in charge of the SPVM right now,” he said. “I’m here to stay.”

Pichet’s comments came at the end of a day that saw new allegation­s of potential bribes from the Mafia being accepted by SPVM officers and one of the force’s highestran­king officers being suspended indefinite­ly — a decision the chief said he had no choice but to make.

The allegation­s related to organized crime were revealed in a small, yet troubling part of an affidavit prepared by police investigat­ors during an investigat­ion into the Montreal Mafia.

On Feb. 17, 2015, two alleged members of the Montreal Mafia, whose names cannot be published at this time, were recorded while they had a conversati­on with Loris Cavaliere, a defence lawyer who was under investigat­ion at the time.

One of the alleged Mafia members asked Cavaliere where “all the heat” they were experienci­ng was coming from. The man said the heat was brutal and was apparently referring to pressure the police were applying to the organizati­on at the time. The three men had no idea their conversati­on was being secretly recorded as part of an investigat­ion led by the Sûreté du Québec.

The author of the affidavit noted

that André Thibodeau, then a sergeant in the Montreal police, had been arrested less than a month before. He was charged with being the leader of an illegal bookmaking operation that was tied to the Mafia. (Early last month, the Crown announced it was no longer able to prosecute the case and a stay of proceeding­s was placed on the charges he faced.)

The alleged Mafioso made an apparent reference to Thibodeau’s arrest before the conversati­on took a disturbing turn. The author of the affidavit summarized the alleged Mafioso as having said: “The police are worried about leaks in the case and that’s why internal affairs is involved.” The investigat­ion into Thibodeau and several other men was done exclusivel­y by the Montreal police internal affairs division.

Cavaliere then asked the alleged Mafioso if he was concerned.

“(The alleged Mafioso) replied no that’s what we pay them for,’ the author of the affidavit wrote.

Asked about the informatio­n revealed in the affidavit, Pichet called it “very preoccupyi­ng” but said it hadn’t been corroborat­ed. He said he was informed on Friday that the alleged bribes had been investigat­ed

once before and that there was “nothing concrete about it.”

“Now that we’ve heard it again, we will look into it once again,” he said.

Earlier Friday, Pichet’s deputy chief, Bernard Lamothe, was suspended in the wake of serious allegation­s concerning the SPVM’s internal affairs division. Pichet would not comment on the reasons for Lamothe’s suspension.

In interviews aired on the French-language network TVA last week, former members of the Montreal police alleged they were victims of fabricated evidence generated by the force’s internal affairs division in an effort to silence them before speaking out about internal corruption.

Pressed to explain Lamothe’s suspension, Pichet said only that it came after he received “precise” informatio­n from the Sûreté du Québec Friday morning. It was announced earlier this week that all Montreal police internal affairs investigat­ions would be turned over to the provincial police.

On Friday, Quebec’s public security minister, Martin Coiteux, asked the public for “a bit of patience.”

Coiteux announced last week he would expand the investigat­ion into the force’s internal affairs division to include investigat­ors from the RCMP and other police forces and that it will be co-directed by SQ assistant director general Yves Morency and Madeleine Giauque, the head of the Bureau des enquêtes indépendan­tes (BEI), an independen­t police-oversight agency.

Coiteux also ordered a separate administra­tive probe into the force, which he announced Friday will be headed by Michel Bouchard, a former deputy minister of justice. Bouchard is to complete a public report by mid-September detailing any problems within the SPVM’s internal affairs division and address the “more systemic

issues” within the force that could affect the public’s confidence in it.

Pichet repeated several times that the SPVM isn’t taking any of the allegation­s lightly and that it will fully co-operate with provincial police during the investigat­ion.

He wouldn’t say if he envisions more suspension­s following Lamothe’s, and urged the public not to jump to conclusion­s, despite the whirlwind of recent allegation­s underminin­g the force’s reputation.

“There’s so much informatio­n coming from all sides, I just want people to be very careful about what they hear,” he said. “They can be sure that we will do everything possible to shed light on all these cases.”

In the meantime, Pichet said, the SPVM is still serving the city and providing the public with the services it expects from the force.

“We’re doing investigat­ions, we’re patrolling every night and every day in a profession­al manner,” he said. “Since I’ve been here, I’ve made big structural changes. I’m working on the culture of the SPVM. But that takes times. It takes years.”

 ?? JOHN MAHONEY ?? “We have a very serious situation to handle right now,” says Montreal police Chief Philippe Pichet of the corruption allegation­s.
JOHN MAHONEY “We have a very serious situation to handle right now,” says Montreal police Chief Philippe Pichet of the corruption allegation­s.
 ??  ?? Bernard Lamothe
Bernard Lamothe

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