Community Partnership

At the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal, our partnership with the community was not built in a day: it is a process that has developed gradually and, over time, become a true partnership structure that proves its value and importance every day.

This partnership can also be found in the definition of the orientations that we have adopted to meet the challenges of policing a changing society. By involving our partners in the development of our strategies, action plans and evaluations, the SPVM has demonstrated its desire to act in complete transparency, with and for the public.

The new partnership structure allows the SPVM to maintain an ongoing dialogue with the public and our partners, and to establish bonds of trust with them while fostering improved relations between our organization and the various cultural communities of Montréal.

For the SPVM, this dedicated discussion platform helps avoid and manage situations that may mar relations between the police and the public. For our partners, the structure is an important forum for communicating their concerns and security needs and influencing the SPVM in its strategic decisions with regard to community relations, through the partnership committees.

Besides helping us to pool our efforts toward the same goal, the structure allows us to act consistently and in cooperation with each other, rather than working solo. In general, the mandate of the partnership structure can be summed up as follows:

• Improve mutual knowledge and understanding among the public, institutional and community partners and the SPVM personnel.
• Maintain effective communications with the various communities and citizens’ groups by playing an active role collecting, distributing and sharing information, in order to contribute to the prevention and detection of problematic situations related to public security and sense of security.
• Provide fast, practical responses to our partners’ security needs.
• Take full advantage of the expertise of all our partners in the strategic identification and planning process.

Partnership committees

The SPVM partnership structure is made up of seven partnership committees:

• Seniors
• Arab community
• Asian community
• Latino community
• Black community
• Youth
• Expert racial profiling

As well as a strategic committee and various formal and informal partnerships at the local and regional levels.

The committee meetings provide an important opportunity to seek solutions to practical problems, in keeping with the SPVM’s mission. To achieve this, mandates are suggested and the committees are asked to consider specific themes, such as:

• Security concerns
• Perception of crime within their community
• Relations with the SPVM
• Potential solutions and actions to avoid

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Meeting frequency and follow-up

The consolidated partnership structure proposes that the partnership committees meet four times a year (or more often, as required) and that the strategic committee meet four to six times a year, including two meetings with members of the various partnership committees.

Once or twice a year, two members (one SPVM member and one civilian) from each partnership committee will meet with the members of the strategic committee to discuss their respective meetings in the neighbourhood stations. This will improve the strategic committee’s understanding of the work done by the partnership committees and inform its reflections, which will in turn be used to advise the SPVM executive, as per its mandate.  

One of the novel aspects of the reform of the current structure is that the partnership committees will meet in the neighbourhood stations in each region. For each meeting, invitations will be sent to various target organizations and to residents. This method will bring us closer to the realities on the ground. The meetings will also provide further opportunity for direct discussion between the SPVM and the public.

Follow-up measures are planned to ensure the effectiveness of the structure. For example, an annual report will provide an overview of the security needs of the various communities and groups and the work of all the committees will be collated.

Members

The members of the partnership committees, the expert committee and the strategic committee all come from community or institutional organizations. They serve on a volunteer basis in a personal capacity for a pre-determined mandate:

• Members of the partnership committee and the strategic committee: three years, renewable once.
• Members of the expert committee: three years, renewable.

The purpose of this measure is to foster renewal and keep the members active and motivated.