Montreal police urged to be vigilant after officers allegedly targeted by bullets

Montreal police are being urged to increase their vigilance on the job after two officers were allegedly targeted by bullets earlier this week.

Insp. David Shane said officers are trained to always be alert for danger but are being asked to be extra careful given the circumstances and to seek help if they feel affected by what happened to their colleagues.

“Anybody that targets people that work in the greater justice system, that’s an unacceptable situation,” said Shane.

“In this particular case, what’s appalling is that the officers were finishing a service call, plainly coming out of the hospital walking to their car, when all of a sudden they were shot at.”

Montreal’s police chief last Tuesday said two officers were targeted in a shooting early Tuesday morning as they exited the McGill University Health Centre in the city’s southwest.

Sylvain Caron told a news conference that officers took cover behind their vehicle and one suffered a slight arm injury in the course of the incident.

Shane says police haven’t identified a motive or a suspect and it’s too soon to say whether the crimes could be linked to other recent shootings in the Montreal area.

“It could be a threat, vengeance,” said retired SPVM officer Stephan Wall. “Did police officers do something in particular to this individual that made them want to get revenge on any police officer. Is this a criminal that wants vengeance? There are many hypotheses, but what is particularly worrisome is that this suspect has not been arrested.”

Shane says police appreciate any shows of support from the public, adding that investigators are asking anyone with information about Tuesday’s shooting to come forward.

Earlier this month, the Quebec government announced a new unit composed of Montreal city police and provincial police to reduce gun trafficking and address the rising number of shootings in the province’s largest city.

That announcement came 48 hours after a shooting in the city’s northeast that police called “unprecedented,” which killed three people known to police and left two others injured.

“What we actually need to reduce violence, it’s a bunch of things, but it’s a bunch of things that doesn’t involve police,” said Concordia University professor Ted Rutland. “It can start with ensuring that street workers are funded, it can also involve that people have access to decent paying work, and we haven’t seen that in the propositions of our politicians as of late.”