Open in full screen mode The grant of 7.4 million granted to the The SPVM community consultation team expires on March 31. (Archive photo) Radio-Canada Voice synthesis , based on artificial intelligence, allows you to generate a spoken text from a written text. Around twenty community organizations in Montreal denounce in an open letter, obtained by Radio-Canada, the end of the' Community consultation and rapprochement team (ECCR) of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) and call for continued funding. The Department of Public Safety's 2021 $7.4 million grant expires on March 31 and will not be renewed. This date will therefore mark the end of the existence of this police team, often described as the police of the future. The SPVM's ECCR was highly appreciated by the Montreal community. Created in 2021 and made up of stakeholders and police officers, it was the only one to patrol exclusively on foot in the metropolis. L'ECCR has also been cited numerous times as an example for its ability to connect with citizens and community partners. The police officers in this team were entirely free from responding to emergency calls in order to develop community policing with vulnerable or marginalized people. The various organizations signatories to this open letter already say they are worried about the repercussions that will follow the disappearance of the ECCR and fear increased pressure on community groups, the judicial sector and social rehabilitation services.< /p>Loading ELSE ON INFO: <em>Everyone's talking about it, </em>from the Radio-Canada studio at daily lifeLoading ELSE ON INFO: <em>Everyone's talking about it, </em>from the Radio-Canada studio à vie jeunesse This announcement is unacceptable and constitutes a huge step backwards for all of the Montreal community, we can read in the open letter. This is why we are asking the Ministry of Public Security and the government in place to reverse this decision, to continue funding the program and to allow the work carried out by the entire ECCR to continue. A quote from Excerpt from an open letter published by dozens of community organizations in Montreal The organizations also highlight the risk of undermining the trust of marginalized communities towards institutions. Working with bodies [like the ECCR] allows us to develop relationships of trust and this work takes time. And there, we will have to start all over again, so for us, such cuts bring a [problem] of maintaining confidence in the authorities, the police and organizations, explains Kingsline Toussaint, director of the community organization Équipe RDP, also signatory of the open letter.
Everyone's talking about it, from the Radio-Canada studio at daily life
Everyone's talking about it, from the Radio-Canada studio at daily life
This SPVM team was perceived by some as the “police of the future” thanks to its uniqueness and field-oriented methods. (Archive photo)
The Ministry of Public Security had not communicated its intentions to the City of Montreal. Made up of 33 police officers, five civilian community development advisors and four sergeants, this team was surprised to learn of the end of the subsidy, as was the administration of Mayor Valérie Plante.
The SPVM had police officers from the ECCR in 15 posts on its territory. They were particularly deployed in the metro and in the Village sector.
With information from Charlotte Dumoulin and Pascal Robidas