ANTI-PARTY PATROLLERS
Police handing out tickets
It had been several weeks since Leila Marshy had seen her two daughters.
So on Sunday, she and her partner met with her daughters and one of their partners at Jeannemance Park, taking great pains to respect the rules of staying two metres apart.
Police officers saw the five of them and determined it was an illegal gathering. Each was asked for identification and now face fines of $1,000 (plus $546 in fees) at the low end, for violating provincial health directives to avoid illegal gatherings during this time of enforced isolation. The maximum fine for that violation is $6,000 plus fees.
“It was a spontaneous decision to meet up at the park, so we did,” Marshy said. “We sat on the grass, but we were sitting far apart, respecting the rule for two metres of distance.”
Montreal Police have stepped up their patrols of parks and other public spaces at the behest of Premier François Legault and Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante, who noted last week that people seem to be flocking to parks when the weather is nice and don’t always respect the rules for maintaining a safe distance.
On Saturday afternoon, both Montreal Police and the Sûreté du Québec were given permission by the province’s crown prosecutors’ office to issue fines directly. Previously, they had to refer all violators to the prosecutors’ office and the fines would be mailed out. In the next few days, it’s expected Laval and Longueuil police forces will be granted the same powers. Marshy’s infraction was issued on Sunday, but not all police officers were briefed on the new procedures over the weekend, so some were still referring the violators to the crown prosecutors’ office, Montreal police Inspector André Durocher said.
Durocher said he believes most people are complying with the guidelines in place, but there is a minority that has not yet gotten the message.
“We want to get the message across that people have to respect the guidelines,” Durocher said. “I think the more people hear about tickets being handed out, the more that rate (of compliance) will go up.”
He said the force issued 146 tickets over the weekend for illegal gatherings. The Sûreté du Québec issued 157 tickets. Longueuil police issued 10 tickets and Laval police issued 56. The tickets issued by Laval and Longueuil police will be processed by the crown prosecutor’s office.
Marshy said she is cognizant of the rules barring gatherings and respects the reasons for it, but she figured she was following the rules.
“Police told us we weren’t allowed to be out of the house unless we were going to buy food,” she said. “It felt unnecessarily punitive.”
Durocher wouldn’t answer questions about this specific case, but reiterated the rules in place that say people are not permitted to gather and must stay two metres apart from one another, unless they are in the same household.
Over the weekend, the city closed the parking lot around Mount Royal Park, shuttered Île-notre-dame and blocked access to the pedestrian bridge linking the Lachine Canal to the Atwater Market.
Some residents of Notre-damede-grâce reported that joggers were told to leave one of the area’s parks in order to respect the order. Durocher said jogging outside, including a park, is acceptable so long as the joggers respect the rules of distance. Police have gotten several reports of joggers passing pedestrians too closely.
SQ Sgt. Stéphane Tremblay said police are getting a lot of calls for people who are gathering illegally. He encouraged people not to call 9-1-1 for those violations, but rather the SQ’S hotline at *4141 on cellphones or 310-4141 on any landline.
Police officers won’t answer questions about whether people can pass through a roadblock and people are instead asked to call the COVID-19 information line at 1-877-644-4545. Other requests for clarification on the rules should be directed to that line as well, Tremblay said.