When Fady Dagher was appointed at the head of the SPVM, he spoke about the field, about neighborhoods, about proximity, about real presence in difficult areas, he said he would spend his first hundred days listening to police officers, civilian employees, community organizations, understanding the city as it is lived, not as it is accounted for.
Today, the public conversation of the SPVM is structured differently.
On the ground, shop owners film repeated thefts, citizens say they avoid certain metro stations, parents adjust their children’s routes, store employees say they no longer call because it changes nothing, and in parallel the SPVM publishes numerical reports, low homicide rates, decreases in armed violence, resolution percentages, indicators that show that Montreal is safe.
The two realities coexist, but they no longer speak the same language. The SPVM itself reports an increase in crimes against the person in its recent reports, and these are the daily violences that citizens describe, not the indicators that make headlines.
The SPVM measures specific categories, and these categories become the proof that the situation is under control, while what is lived between two statistical boxes, a complaint classified as unfounded, an event summarized by a single offense, a call that will never be made because the citizen has lost confidence, progressively exits the official portrait.
The table is coherent, defensible, presentable at a press conference but in reality, the street adjusts its habits.
What happened is subtle: at the beginning we spoke about proximity, now we speak about indicators, and when the mission of a police service is defined by the numbers it produces, and when that same service collects those data, chooses the categories, decides what enters the table then comes back before the public to evaluate itself on that same table, the system becomes judge and witness at the same time.
The central point becomes simple: the SPVM chooses to measure what produces a good annual report.
Because a city can display a low homicide rate while seeing ordinary assaults increase, those that change daily habits, those that make people close earlier and avoid certain streets. A city can be safe in an annual report and less and less livable for those who live there.
So leadership, what is it really? The head of the SPVM is appointed, not elected, and that appointment that appointment removes from the citizen any direct leverage over the one who defines security. That power gives him columns, percentages, clean press releases. And in parallel, the field becomes an image of nomination and the numbers become institutional protection. The indicators are chosen, validated, presented by the same structure that must then defend its performance, and as long as this framing does not change, security will remain defined by those who measure it.
In the end, security is decided in an Excel file, and no one would vote for an Excel file.
