City will have new chief by December, Plante says
Opposition leader accuses administration of moving too quickly in making selection
Montreal will have a new police chief by the end of the month, Mayor Valérie Plante said Tuesday. Plante made the announcement at a press conference at city hall where she endorsed a newly released report by interim police chief Martin Prud’homme on his efforts to reform the troubled force, raise morale and improve its image. The new chief will be one of two candidates recommended by Prud’homme, who was seconded from his usual job as director of the Sûreté du Québec for one year to analyze and remedy problems within the Montreal police department. They are Line Carbonneau, a retired deputy commissioner of the RCMP, and Sylvain Caron, the former assistant director of the Sûreté du Québec. Carbonneau and Caron were among four top managers Prud’homme recruited in March to help him restructure the police department. “We’re really satisfied with the work that Mr. Prud’homme did and how he was able to bring back a better atmosphere with some trust and transparency,” Plante said. “So when Mr. Prud’homme in his report proposed to go with candidates that are working with him so they’ll be able to continue what he started, we felt really comfortable with that,” she said. Plante said a selection committee is already at work to choose a replacement and city council would approve the appointment at its next meeting, which starts Nov. 28. In fact, the candidate was chosen on Tuesday, intimated municipal opposition leader Lionel Perez, who delegated a representative of his party to sit on the selection committee. “This process is much more than undertaken. I would say it’s almost completed,” Perez said. “The selection committee was held today. There were interviews,” Perez said. “I have to maintain the confidentiality of that selection committee meeting, but obviously if there was only a limited number of candidates and the announcement is going to be made soon, you can draw your conclusions on that,” he said. Earlier, Quebec Public Security Minister Geneviève Guilbault confirmed that Prud’homme, appointed last December by Guilbault’s predecessor, Martin Coiteux, will not stay on when his mandate expires at the end of the year. The choice of a new chief must be approved by the minister once it has been passed by city council. Guilbault also unveiled Prud’homme’s final report, which shows “the police department is on the right track.” She welcomed the recommendation that the future chief be one of the two deputies who worked with him on cleaning up the force, rather than a candidate from inside the Service de police de la ville de Montréal (SPVM). In the 38-page report, Prud’homme recommends that the city should groom future candidates for executive positions within the police force in order to have several candidates to choose from when appointing future chiefs. “In the meantime, the city should be cautious and appoint a director who will be able to respond to the current need for stability and continuity in the organization,” he advises. Guilbault said the report will restore Montrealers’ confidence in their police department. “I’m convinced the force is headed for better days,” she said. “(The force) is still fragile and that’s why I endorsed the recommendation made by Mr. Prud’homme that the next chief of police should be nominated among the two persons who work with him now. We are going to support the city of Montreal in the process of nominating a chief of police,” she said. However, Perez accused the Plante administration of going too fast in choosing the next chief, saying the search should have been widened to include other candidates from outside the Montreal force. “Why limit ourselves to only two candidates?” he said. “There’s no reason to act in a fast-track fashion,” he said. In the report, Prud’homme says he had taken “the appropriate steps to correct the deficiencies revealed by” a devastating 2017 report by lawyer Michel Bouchard and that the “working climate is now a lot more positive today than last December.”
CULTURE CHANGE DELICATE
But he warned that the culture change within the force was still delicate and could be reversed. “Any loosening of the vigilance over the new requirements, new guidelines and new processes that have been put in place could cause a return to old practices,” he said. The improved work climate “remains fragile and will require constant attention from the next director,” he says. Any letup in management’s efforts or changes in its approach could send the efforts to correct problems in the force back to Square One, Prud’homme warned. In a preliminary report in June, Prud’homme described the atmosphere in the department under former chief Philippe Pichet as negative and unhealthy and said that members of the force were afraid to denounce wrongdoing for fear of reprisals. Pichet was suspended after the Bouchard report revealed deep-seated problems in the Internal Affairs Division. The report said some criminal allegations against SPVM officers had not been investigated or reported, and that some officers had been shielded from disciplinary action. In June, a second highly critical report was published, this time by Prud’homme, which resulted in his dismissal as chief.