Crimes against persons on the rise in Montreal, SPVM statistics show
There were 8,812 motor vehicles stolen in Montreal in 2024, which was down 25 per cent from the high of 11,756 stolen in 2023, but still 19 per cent higher than the five-year average. The police force said creating a temporary integrated team that included the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canada Border Services Agency, along with increased media visibility to deter criminals, played a role in dropping the numbers in 2023. The increase in vehicle theft was linked to a shortage of new and used automobiles after the COVID-19 pandemic, which drove up their value.
Police investigations showed motor vehicle thefts were often used as a means to finance the purchase of firearms and drug trafficking by criminal groups.
In 2024, the police seized more than 1,300 stolen vehicles marked for export at the Port of Montreal, a main conduit in Canada for shipping cars overseas.
After 2023, when the incidence of arson was higher than the average for the last five years, there were 501 incidents of arson in 2024. This was a decline of about 7 per cent. Criminal groups are suspected of being behind some of these arsons in the context of extortion attempts mainly targeting businesses.
There were 451 firearms offences recorded in 2021, down 13 per cent from 2023, but still up 17.3 per cent compared to the five-year average.
There were 375 hate crimes reported in 2025, a six per cent increase over 2023. Roughly half were related to ethnicity or skin colour, and one third linked to religion. There were 52 hate crimes reported linked to sexual orientation, identity or gender expression.
There were 15,567 road accidents on the territory covered by the Montreal police in 2024, a slight improvement over the previous year, and over the five-year average.
The number of collisions involving serious injuries increased by 25 per cent compared to the average for 2019 to 2023 and by 27.7 per cent compared to 2023. Last year saw an increase in the number of fatal collisions and the number of deaths compared to the average for the last five years and compared to 2023. There were 32 deaths in 2024.
There were three fatalities involving cyclests and/or scooters, and 17 fatal collisions involving pedestrians, up from 15 in 2023.
The Montreal police force counts just under 6,000 employees, of which 4,553 are police officers, and 1,320 are civilians.
In 2024, the force hired 328 officers and 191 civilians.
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Montreal Gazette
5 hours ago
- Montreal Gazette
Crimes against persons on the rise in Montreal, SPVM statistics show
There were 8,812 motor vehicles stolen in Montreal in 2024, which was down 25 per cent from the high of 11,756 stolen in 2023, but still 19 per cent higher than the five-year average. The police force said creating a temporary integrated team that included the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canada Border Services Agency, along with increased media visibility to deter criminals, played a role in dropping the numbers in 2023. The increase in vehicle theft was linked to a shortage of new and used automobiles after the COVID-19 pandemic, which drove up their value. Police investigations showed motor vehicle thefts were often used as a means to finance the purchase of firearms and drug trafficking by criminal groups. In 2024, the police seized more than 1,300 stolen vehicles marked for export at the Port of Montreal, a main conduit in Canada for shipping cars overseas. After 2023, when the incidence of arson was higher than the average for the last five years, there were 501 incidents of arson in 2024. This was a decline of about 7 per cent. Criminal groups are suspected of being behind some of these arsons in the context of extortion attempts mainly targeting businesses. There were 451 firearms offences recorded in 2021, down 13 per cent from 2023, but still up 17.3 per cent compared to the five-year average. There were 375 hate crimes reported in 2025, a six per cent increase over 2023. Roughly half were related to ethnicity or skin colour, and one third linked to religion. There were 52 hate crimes reported linked to sexual orientation, identity or gender expression. There were 15,567 road accidents on the territory covered by the Montreal police in 2024, a slight improvement over the previous year, and over the five-year average. The number of collisions involving serious injuries increased by 25 per cent compared to the average for 2019 to 2023 and by 27.7 per cent compared to 2023. Last year saw an increase in the number of fatal collisions and the number of deaths compared to the average for the last five years and compared to 2023. There were 32 deaths in 2024. There were three fatalities involving cyclests and/or scooters, and 17 fatal collisions involving pedestrians, up from 15 in 2023. The Montreal police force counts just under 6,000 employees, of which 4,553 are police officers, and 1,320 are civilians. In 2024, the force hired 328 officers and 191 civilians.
Montreal Gazette
2 days ago
- Montreal Gazette
‘Complicit with a totalitarian regime': Canada's border rules are landing asylum seekers in ICE detention
News By Canadian authorities have returned more than 1,600 asylum seekers to the United States in 2025 without hearing their case for refugee protection, according to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). Many have landed in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. The removals are a product of the longstanding Safe Third Country Agreement, which requires anyone seeking refugee protection in Canada or the U.S. to claim asylum in the first of the two countries they reach. This means many asylum seekers who attempt to enter Canada through the U.S. are turned back at the border. The agreement is based on the assumption both the U.S. and Canada have sufficiently robust refugee protection systems. But with the U.S. asylum system now suspended and amid reports of refugee claimants facing deportation without so much as an interview, Canadian advocates say the U.S. is no longer safe for those fleeing persecution. Canadian authorities must stop the removals, they say, and allow refugee claimants to plead their cases on this side of the border. CBSA data shared with The Gazette show authorities sent a total of 1,624 asylum seekers back to the U.S. between Jan. 1 and June 2, 2025. Though the deportation data isn't broken down by location, just over 40 per cent of all asylum seekers in 2025 — deported or not — made their claims at the St-Bernard-de-Lacolle crossing, south of Montreal, CBSA data shows. Unless they have legal status in the U.S., all asylum seekers returned from Canada are transferred into ICE custody, a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol spokesperson confirmed in an emailed statement. Canadian authorities 'are complicit with an increasingly totalitarian regime,' said Wendy Ayotte, a member of Bridges Not Borders, a grassroots organization of people living near the now shuttered Roxham Road crossing. Ayotte called Canadian authorities 'cruel' for sending asylum seekers into the hands of the same immigration authorities who deported more than 100 Venezuelan men to a high-security El Salvador prison and reportedly removed U.S. citizens from their own country. Her organization maintains a web page with information for asylum seekers planning to cross into Canada, which Ayotte said sees a steady flow of web traffic. 'A lot of people are totally ignorant' of the Safe Third Country Agreement, Ayotte said, including of how to assert exemptions that allow certain groups of people to claim asylum when crossing from the U.S. One exemption is for those with family members in Canada. But some asylum seekers with legitimate connections are struggling to prove it, according to Jenn McIntyre, coordinator of the Canada-U.S. Border Rights Clinic, which provides legal assistance to migrants seeking protection in Canada. 'We do see people who approach the border and should be found eligible under the Safe Third Country Agreement because they have family members in Canada, but they don't necessarily have all of the information' needed to assert their eligibility, she said. 'They don't always have all the correct documentation on hand. 'And so we do see people turned back from the border even though they have families in Canada. The consequences of getting turned back are very severe.' Most people are being detained upon return to the U.S., she said, which could eventually see them deported to the very country they fled. 'When a person makes a claim for refugee protection at a port of entry, a CBSA border service officer will determine if, on a balance of probabilities, evidence shows that the refugee claimant is subject to the Safe Third Country Agreement,' CBSA spokesperson Rebecca Purdy said in an email. The onus to prove the right to seek protection is on the asylum seeker, Purdy said. But that isn't always easy for someone fleeing persecution, according to Ayotte. 'Imagine someone without any prior preparation or knowledge presenting themselves at the border and, all of a sudden, they're going through an interview. But they don't understand the purpose of the interview,' she said. Some of those seeking asylum at the border are Haitian, said Abdulla Daoud, executive director of the Refugee Centre in Montreal. In February, U.S. President Donald Trump removed deportation protections for Haitians facing continuing gang violence that has seen more than a million people in the country become homeless. Many Haitians have family in Canada, Daoud said, making them eligible to claim asylum. Daoud said he, too, had heard of people turned away despite a family connection. Others are truly ineligible, he said, but have come to the border without understanding the rules. 'They are typically the most vulnerable of the vulnerable,' he said. By turning them away, Canadian officials 'are doing ICE's job for them.' Most people claiming asylum in Canada have a legitimate fear of persecution or even death, Daoud said. In 2024, nearly 80 per cent of asylum seekers who made their case to an immigration judge were granted refugee status (excluding claims that were withdrawn or abandoned). Daoud said this proves most claims are legitimate. If eight out of 10 asylum seekers have a legitimate claim and those returned to the U.S. are facing increasing odds of deportation 'what is the statistical probability that we're sending people to their death?' The contested agreement has been challenged in the courts. In 2023, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld it, but sent a question over its constitutionality back to a lower court. Though especially concerning now, the Safe Third Country Agreement, first signed in 2002, has never been acceptable, said Adam Sadinsky, advocacy co-chair at the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, which is participating in the continuing legal challenge. 'The way that refugees and asylum seekers are treated in the United States has always been problematic,' Sadinsky said. But he said the system has only become worse under Trump. 'What's clear in the United States now is that the asylum process is not being respected,' Sadinsky said. In an emailed statement, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson Julie Lafortune said the U.S. 'continues to meet the criteria ... to be a designated safe third country.' She said Ottawa continues to monitor developments in the U.S. to 'ensure that the conditions that led to the designation as a safe third country continue to be met.' Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab's office declined The Gazette's request for an interview. The Liberal government has since tabled Bill C-2, which, among other measures, would further restrict migrants' ability to claim asylum.
Winnipeg Free Press
2 days ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
South Dakota is on track to spend $2 billion on prisons in the next decade
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Two years after approving a tough-on-crime sentencing law, South Dakota is scrambling to deal with the price tag for that legislation: Housing thousands of additional inmates could require up to $2 billion to build new prisons in the next decade. That's a lot of money for a state with one of the lowest populations in the U.S., but a consultant said it's needed to keep pace with an anticipated 34% surge of new inmates in the next decade as a result of South Dakota's tough criminal justice laws. And while officials are grumbling about the cost, they don't seem concerned with the laws that are driving the need even as national crime rates are dropping. 'Crime has been falling everywhere in the country, with historic drops in crime in the last year or two,' said Bob Libal, senior campaign strategist at the criminal justice nonprofit The Sentencing Project. 'It's a particularly unusual time to be investing $2 billion in prisons.' Some Democratic-led states have worked to close prisons and enact changes to lower inmate populations, but that's a tough sell in Republican-majority states such as South Dakota that believe in a tough-on-crime approach, even if that leads to more inmates. The South Dakota State Penitentiary For now, state lawmakers have set aside a $600 million fund to replace the overcrowded 144-year-old South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls, making it one of the most expensive taxpayer-funded projects in South Dakota history. But South Dakota will likely need more prisons. Phoenix-based Arrington Watkins Architects, which the state hired as a consultant, has said South Dakota will need 3,300 additional beds in coming years, bringing the cost to $2 billion. Driving up costs is the need for facilities with different security levels to accommodate the inmate population. Concerns about South Dakota's prisons first arose four years ago, when the state was flush with COVID-19 relief funds. Lawmakers wanted to replace the penitentiary, but they couldn't agree on where to put the prison and how big it should be. A task force of state lawmakers assembled by Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden is expected to decide that in a plan for prison facilities this July. Many lawmakers have questioned the proposed cost, but few have called for criminal justice changes that would make such a large prison unnecessary. 'One thing I'm trying to do as the chairman of this task force is keep us very focused on our mission,' said Lieutenant Gov. Tony Venhuizen. 'There are people who want to talk about policies in the prisons or the administration or the criminal justice system more broadly, and that would be a much larger project than the fairly narrow scope that we have.' South Dakota's laws mean more people are in prison South Dakota's incarceration rate of 370 per 100,000 people is an outlier in the Upper Midwest. Neighbors Minnesota and North Dakota have rates of under 250 per 100,000 people, according to the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice advocacy nonprofit. Nearly half of South Dakota's projected inmate population growth can be attributed to a law approved in 2023 that requires some violent offenders to serve the full-length of their sentences before parole, according to a report by Arrington Watkins. When South Dakota inmates are paroled, about 40% are ordered to return to prison, the majority of those due to technical violations such as failing a drug test or missing a meeting with a parole officer. Those returning inmates made up nearly half of prison admissions in 2024. Sioux Falls criminal justice attorney Ryan Kolbeck blamed the high number of parolees returning in part on the lack of services in prison for people with drug addictions. 'People are being sent to the penitentiary but there's no programs there for them. There's no way it's going to help them become better people,' he said. 'Essentially we're going to put them out there and house them for a little bit, leave them on parole and expect them to do well.' South Dakota also has the second-greatest disparity of Native Americans in its prisons. While Native Americans make up one-tenth of South Dakota's population, they make up 35% of those in state prisons, according to Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit public policy group. Though legislators in the state capital, Pierre, have been talking about prison overcrowding for years, they're reluctant to dial back on tough-on-crime laws. For example, it took repeated efforts over six years before South Dakota reduced a controlled substance ingestion law to a misdemeanor from a felony for the first offense, aligning with all other states. 'It was a huge, Herculean task to get ingestion to be a misdemeanor,' Kolbeck said. Former penitentiary warden Darin Young said the state needs to upgrade its prisons, but he also thinks it should spend up to $300 million on addiction and mental illness treatment. 'Until we fix the reasons why people come to prison and address that issue, the numbers are not going to stop,' he said. Without policy changes, the new prisons are sure to fill up, criminal justice experts agreed. 'We might be good for a few years, now that we've got more capacity, but in a couple years it'll be full again,' Kolbeck said. 'Under our policies, you're going to reach capacity again soon.'
