Montreal police cite ‘holistic strategy’ for homicide drop, but critics say there’s a cost

In 2023, 33 homicides reported on the Island of Montreal — including the deaths of seven people in a burning building in the historic part of the city — down from 41 in 2022.

Montreal police say a year-over-year drop in the number of homicides in the city is a sign that violence-prevention and crime-fighting strategies are paying off.

But those strategies, which include a greater police presence in certain neighbourhoods, and the monitoring of people showing high-risk behaviour, have critics complaining that police are focusing more on repression than prevention.

Last year, there were 33 homicides reported on the Island of Montreal — including the deaths of seven people in a burning building in the historic part of the city — down from 41 in 2022.

Cmdr. Jean-Sébastien Caron, who heads the city’s major crimes squad, credits the drop in killings to a mix of arrests, increased police visibility in parts of the city prone to violence, and prevention programs that have officers working with community organizations to give young people alternatives to crime.

“It’s really a holistic strategy that appears to be working,” Caron said in an recent interview.

Beginning in late 2022, Caron said police made a series of arrests in connection with murder and attempted murder cases, after investigating members of criminal groups, particularly street gangs. In April 2023, for example, police arrested eight people they said were linked to the gang-related murder of an 18-year-old.

The series of arrests has “certainly had quite a major impact, but you can’t forget the work that’s been done at the community level, at the prevention level,” he said.

Between 2011 and 2020, Montreal police reported an average of 28.4 homicides a year; there were 25 homicides in 2021. That number rose to 37 in 2021, before rising again the following year. Police have attributed much of the rise to gun violence linked to criminal groups.