Allison Hanes: Montreal police Chief Fady Dagher asks for patience with reforms

Dagher says his immediate priority is the recruitment and retention of officers, who have been leaving Montreal in record numbers.

Expectations are high for Fady Dagher, Montreal’s new police chief, and his yet-to-be-defined blueprint to transform the department.

But so is the pressure.

Just over two weeks into the job, Dagher — who returned to the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal after six years as the top cop in Longueuil — said he feels it already.

“Some people told me the Montreal police is a cemetery for directors,” he said. “And I know. It’s been a few weeks. The pressure is there. I expect it.”

Some of the scrutiny is coming from inside the SPVM, which has a long history of internal turmoil and where the chief’s office has had a revolving door in recent years.

But some of it is also coming from outside. As the first immigrant to serve as police chief in this diverse city, Dagher, who is Lebanese but grew up in Côte d’Ivoire, carries the weight of ordinary people’s hopes.

“Honestly, I’m scared — people were like, ‘The messiah came.’ No, no, no. I’m nothing. I need my team and I need everybody around,” he said. “So that scares me a bit to bring the hopes too high. But to be honest with you, I immigrated to Montreal in 1985. I was 17 years old. When I came to the airport with my suitcase, I was alone with my brother. If I came and I saw that the chief of police of Montreal was a visible minority, I would have been like, ‘Oh!’ I would be very proud. I would believe everything’s possible here.”

In a sit-down interview with the Montreal Gazette last week, Dagher described how he forged ties with communities, built trust with the population and changed the culture of law enforcement in Longueuil, an approach he plans to adapt for Montreal. But there was much more from the conversation worth sharing.

Dagher said his immediate priority is the recruitment and retention of officers, who have been leaving Montreal in record numbers.

“I cannot talk about any program I want to implement when you have 20 to 30 per cent (vacancy) among people in the field,” he said. “So let’s not talk about the vision, the mission, without taking care of the field, the recruitment and the retention of the people. When it’s done, now we talk. Is it going to take me, with the team, eight months? One year? Two years? We’re going to have to be patient.”

While it’s essential to increase the diversity of the rank and file to reflect the population of Montreal, Dagher said reshaping the department will depend on the current troops, in whom he has enormous faith.

“We have to find a way to attract the minority and cultural communities inside the police. But I cannot focus only on that. I have to focus on the majority of my police officers,” he said. “Most of the police officers who impressed me in my career in St-Michel, in Longueuil, they were white, Québécois, with long roots. Most of them are amazing. They helped me. They taught me how to work. … So there is a lot of hope to focus on them to bring the change.”

Civil rights groups have been pressuring police forces for years to start using body cameras for the sake of transparency and accountability. There was a pilot project in Montreal back in 2017, and an expert provincial committee recommended their use in 2020. But Montreal officers are still not equipped.

Dagher said he is not against body cameras, but warns they are just one tool to help build trust.

“I’m OK with it, I agree,” he said. “But please, don’t believe that the body camera is the answer for everything. It helps and we need them, but again, I’d rather focus on the culture.”

Racial profiling is one of the biggest issues Dagher must tackle if he wants the approach to policing to evolve in Montreal. Over the years, the SPVM has been criticized for disproportionately stopping citizens for driving, taking out the recycling, laughing too loud or eating ice cream while Black, Indigenous or a member of other racialized groups.

A report by an expert panel in 2019 finally produced data to back up the anecdotal reports. Former police chief Sylvain Caron promised reforms. But he refused to abandon the policy of street checks outright, vowing instead to educate officers and create a more rigorous framework around the practice.

In assuming leadership of the SPVM, Dagher said he’s not ready to touch the measures put in place by Caron — at least not yet. But a re-evaluation is coming.

Longueuil’s immersion program for officers was a powerful catalyst for demonstrating conscious and unconscious bias. With training courses, Dagher said, “you’ve understood only 10 per cent.”

“But when you go inside the community and you stay with them and they tell you what they’re going through … they explain to you what kind of feeling they have for their own kids driving a car. First of all, you’re not in uniform, you’re not a threat, and the barriers go down. And then you realize, ‘I’m creating this without even knowing, without even being conscious of it.’ ”

Dagher said racial profiling is not only profoundly damaging to members of the community, it’s also just bad policing.

“The focus on what’s a criminal, who’s a criminal, sometimes I still don’t think we are well trained on that,” he said. “Did you know that real gangs, real criminals, organized crime … what they do is they get a white couple, Québécois, and they pay them $10,000 with a Honda Accord, they put in the trunk 20 kg of cocaine. Did you see that couple passing? Oh, no. Do you understand? You’re fishing and not hunting. And that, my friend, you’re being stupid.”

Dagher said it was difficult to leave Longueuil, “but my heart is here.”

“Some people immigrate to Canada and others to Quebec. Me, I immigrated to Montreal. I love Montreal. I’m back to my roots.”

ahanes@postmedia.com

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