Police, Native Friendship Centre teaming up for joint patrol squad
Montreal police are starting a new joint patrol in collaboration with the Native Friendship Centre of Montreal, combining patrol officers with social workers to help intervene in cases involving members of the Indigenous community.
Four intervention workers will be hired by the Native Friendship Centre to ride along with the police to provide aid and prevention awareness, and to forge bonds and open barriers to communication between the police and citizens in need. They are slated to be hired by April.
Brett Pineau, director general of the Native Friendship Centre, said the goal is to hire workers with a knowledge of native languages like Inuktitut or Cree.
Ian Lafrenière, the newly appointed minister responsible for Indigenous affairs, made the announcement Friday morning in Cabot Square Park, located next to the Atwater métro station.
It's a longtime gathering point for members of the Indigenous and Inuit communities, many of them homeless or in need of social aid.
“As you know, I've been in downtown Montreal for years, and this is a problem that has been deteriorating,” said Lafrenière, who served as head of communications for the Montreal force before being elected to the National Assembly with the Coalition Avenir Québec.
“These social workers working with the Montreal police can refer people to shelters or to other resources, they can help to find more permanent solutions. … Police can't be the final answer. We need more.”
The Quebec government is giving more than $300,000 annually to the Native Friendship Centre to fund the program. Lafrenière said the government will be making another announcement Saturday. The SPVM also plans to hire a member of the Indigenous community shortly as another resource, Lafrenière said.
There have been similar mixed squads working in Montreal since 2014, said Carlo Deangelis, Aboriginal liaison officer with the Montreal police force, but with only enough employees to patrol two times per week for three hours a day.
The additional hires will allow for a full-time presence on the streets and to spread the squad out to eight separate police stations in the city, stretching from downtown Montreal to Dorval.
“I approached Brett in 2013 about getting some mixed patrols because we realized some members of the community were going toward the resources, for numerous reasons. And, at the same time, it was a good way to build relations and trust with the community.”
The number of people who sought help for services increased by 20 per cent in the 18 months after the first squad was implemented, Deangelis said.
Officers who patrol with intervention workers gain a better knowledge of the histories and intergenerational traumas that have formed the people they encounter on the street, and of how to help them, and they in turn become resources within their police stations.
“We're out there to help, make sure they know the resources that are available, do they have their identity cards, do they need help for clothing, etc.
“What's important is when we start talking, start collaborating, we realize we're not that much different from one another. We want to help, and it builds that trust.”
In early November, Quebec announced it was putting $15 million toward improving Indigenous access and trust in the province's health-care system.
The funds were the first of several promised announcements made by Lafrenière since the death of Joyce Echaquan, a 37-year-old Atikamekw woman, which sparked a new conversation about institutional racism in Quebec.