Gun violence, street gangs, mob activity: Q&A with SPVM inspector David Shane

It’s been a year with some gang-related and mafia-related activity in Montreal and several daytime targets. Montreal Police Inspector David Shane speaks to CityNews about this and how the SPVM has been investigating.

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Daytime shootings, specifically targeting some high profile individuals, including a female business owner in Côte-des-Neiges. How did the SPVM approach this?

“First off, it’s all about working with our partners with the Sûreté du Québec and the RCMP and always having the intelligence coming in to track what’s going on. So obviously we’re in uncertain times. There’s a lot of instability. The leadership in different organizations, criminal organizations is reorganizing. So definitely, we will see more events like this throughout the next year as well. But we’re maintaining pressure on these individuals, showing our presence, making arrests, making seizures, and we have different projects, major investigation projects that are ongoing and we wish that we will be able to maintain that pressure on these individuals so that they don’t get dangerous for the common citizen.”

Is it a surprise to you that these acts are happening in broad daylight?

“Well this is something that we’ve seen in the past history of Montreal and Quebec. In the criminal biker gang war, these types of events have happened during daylight. It’s not anything new. I think when we see those types of murders that occur between gang members that are done maybe in a more professional style, they will happen during daylight as well. But what brings insecurity is everything that has to do with being spontaneous. For example, criminals, street gangs, or anything related with drug trafficking, things that happen very spontaneously. So post-pandemic, we’ve seen these events moving from, let’s say, downtown area, bar areas to residential areas. That had to do a lot with confinement. So as we reopened, we realized that this is happening a bit all over town. Because with social media, if one gang wants to taunt the next one, they could just go online and they can actually send them messages directly. Before, in the days when I was a street gang investigator, that was just not possible. The only place where they came together was when they bumped into each other in a bar or downtown going out and that’s usually where the events happen. So now they can taunt each other, they can film rap videos or music videos where they use symbols, they use threats and then they can go look out for each other and try to get revenge.”

Would you say then the SPVM is making gains on combating gun violence and how?

“Every year that goes by we always get better. I think that’s the idea of any organization, let alone a police organization. We need to learn from either mistakes or learn from the evolution of crime. And every year when we present, for example, our annual report, we’ll look at the activity, criminal activity, how is it shifting? So in the past years, obviously we’ve seen the hike in gun violence. What did we do? We adapted. We created certain squads or projects and as we’re moving on, for example, we’re seeing a rise in car theft and we are adapting and we put forward a special task force with Montreal Police, Sûreté du Québec and other partners and that’s the only way to go. We need to be agile. We cannot be in cement and just stay rigid. We need to be flexible and adapted to situation always.”