Police chief outlines strategy to reform SPVM
Prud’homme trims top brass, vows openness, targets internal affairs
Trimming the top brass in the Montreal police department from 11 managers to four and restructuring its internal affairs division are two of the solutions interim police chief Martin Prud’homme proposed Tuesday for the troubled force.
Prud’homme made the recommendations at a meeting of the city’s public security commission that made history by being open to the public.
Prud’homme’s message and the opening of the meeting to the public both signalled a new era of transparency on policing, said councillor Alex Norris, the chairperson of the city’s public-security committee.
“We want to have a completely transparent process of accountability, and that’s what we’ve started today,” Norris said after Prud’homme outlined his preliminary proposals to fix the 6,000-employee force.
“I think we’re off to a good start in restoring the credibility of the Montreal police,” he added.
On Dec. 6, Public Security Minister Martin Coiteux tasked Prud’homme, the chief of the Sûreté du Québec, with fixing the troubled force after a report revealed a toxic culture of cliques and ethical breaches, particularly in the internal affairs division, which investigates allegations of wrongdoing by police officers.
Coiteux suspended police chief Philippe Pichet with pay. Pichet was recently reassigned to supervise the city’s security guards.
On Tuesday, Prud’homme said that in the nearly three months he has been on the job, he has confirmed many of the problems detailed in a 96-page report by former deputy justice minister Michel Bouchard following his nine-month investigation into the SPVM’s internal affairs division.
“I can corroborate many of the observations of Mr. Bouchard,” Prud’homme told the committee.
Bouchard reported that the internal affairs division failed to investigate or report several criminal allegations against SPVM police officers, that it gave some officers preferential treatment and that significant evidence was deliberately removed from reports to keep certain officers from facing disciplinary action or being charged.
Prud’homme said his top priority is cleaning up and reorganizing the internal affairs division, which Coiteux has temporarily relieved of its job of investigating SVPM officers.
However, the division is still responsible for purely disciplinary matters that do not involve criminal allegations.
But his first act was to trim the fat in top management.
Prud’homme said his research revealed that many of the force’s top managers working directly under the chief had overlapping responsibilities, so he reduced his team to four from 11.
Having a smaller management team is not only more efficient but also saves taxpayers’ dollars, he noted.
“We wanted to look into this because citizens’ ability to pay is important, so we need the right balance,” he said to reporters after the meeting.
Prud’homme said that 70 per cent of the criticisms in Bouchard’s report relate to the internal affairs division, so that is where he will focus most of his energies next.
He promised to establish new procedures and standards to ensure the division “will be much more transparent, will be accountable to the public and will answer questions.”
“We will provide statistics to tell you how we handled a certain investigation,” Prud’homme said to reporters.
“You will get a lot more answers than you ever got before.”
In his report, Bouchard recommended that the government amend Quebec’s law on policing so that responsibility for investigating criminal allegations against police officers no longer rests with the same force where the officers work.
Police forces’ internal affairs divisions would remain responsible for disciplinary matters.
But Prud’homme said he will enact changes to get the SPVM’s internal affairs division ready to resume handling criminal investigations, on the assumption it will eventually get back that responsibility.
“Our duty in the force over the next few months and the next few weeks is to make sure we have the right people and the right training so we can respond once we know the decision on investigations,” Prud’homme said.
The interim chief said input he has received from the rank and file since taking over at the SPVM shows there is a desire for change within the force, as well as a need to rebuild morale.
“I feel there is a contagious will to turn the page,” he said.
Prud’homme proposed a series of changes that he said would make the SPVM more professional and transparent, restore the public’s trust and shore up officers’ confidence in leadership.
They include revising internal promotions to ensure the process is fair and transparent and transforming what many officers have described as a toxic culture.
“We will gradually transform the organizational chart as our analysis progresses,” he said.
Prud’homme’s mandate also includes drawing up criteria for the next police chief, who will take the helm when his mandate expires at the end of this year. He will return to his former position as head of the SQ.
Norris said that from now on, the public will be able to attend most sessions of the public-security committee and ask questions about issues from racial profiling to policing of demonstrations to intermediate weapons like batons, Tasers and rubber bullets.
The city has said it will hold public consultations on rubber bullets, which caused a demonstrator in one of the 2012 maple spring student demonstrations, in Victoriaville, to lose an eye.
“There is a whole series of difficult issues that we will talk about in public with the police director and his team, and I think that it’s by asking these difficult questions that we will improve and clean up the culture of the SPVM,” Norris said.
Norris said the city has not yet begun scouting for its next police chief, and that as far as he knew, there was no truth to a media report saying that it has approached Denis Gallant, a star prosecutor at the Charbonneau Commission into corruption and collusion.