City of Montreal hires private security to patrol high-crime areas downtown

The City of Montreal has hired private security guards to patrol the Village, Chinatown, and Old Montreal to support the SPVM with tackling the increase in drug dealing, drug consumption, incivility, and harassment. This comes amid rising safety concerns from downtown Montreal residents.

Robert Beaudry, a city councillor for the Ville-Marie borough and the executive committee member in charge of homelessness, believes in the necessity of this project, as he says it will help deal with climbing crime rates directly.

“It was really a way to respond really quickly to that concern of the population and really act on criminality, because there’s no cohabitation on criminality,” Beaudry said. “We know that we have a situation of homeless situation in downtown Montreal. I think that the population of downtown worries for those people, for the criminality. We need boots, we need people on the street.”

According to a recent survey by the Citizens Association of the Village of Montreal, 68.2 per cent of the Village’s residents find it to be not very safe or not at all safe, while over 66 per cent believe the quality of life to be poor or very poor.

Murray Hymson, a resident of downtown Montreal, shares similar feelings.

“I also work at the CHUM and when I go to the CHUM in the morning, I never go along De la Gauchetière in the morning early, because it’s horrible,” he stated. “It’s that people follow you. They scare you. They rush after you. “

Rather than intervening directly, security guards will be reporting criminal activity to police and social intervention teams. While some guards will be in uniform to “work on the safety feeling of the population,” others will be undercover.

Jean-Pierre Dansereau, a resident of the Village, finds this to be beneficial.

“When the police are so visible, people change their behaviour, so someone who would be more undercover, maybe there would really be a real vision of what’s happening,” Dansereau said.

Another Village resident, Magali Blanco, says she sees the problems in the area, but feels safe when walking around.

“I just personally don’t feel threatened, but I’m glad if the city can offer more help to them, because in the end that’s what we want, so that people feel better and they have more options and they feel that they have support and help,” she said.

In Chinatown, Winston Chan, a member of Montreal Chinatown Revitalization Committee, believes additional security to be an important step in adding support for residents, merchants, and employees.

“There’s a lot of drug trafficking plus homelessness plus a mental health problem and especially a big addiction problem,” he noted. “So we see that a lot of those who have addiction problems, they will tend to do crimes in Chinatown.”

This $120,000 pilot project was launched in mid-October, and will go on for two months, after which the city will assess its progress to see what adjustments need to be made, and what other measures need to be implemented.

As of now, Beaudry says they are working with social workers in addition to security in order to provide services for those in need.

“We work with social organization as well. We work with animation also to create more safety feeling to the population,” Beaudry said. “So it’s never only a way or our solution.”