AA/Montreal/Hatem Kattou

Fady Dagher, 54, was officially unveiled as the new chief of the Montreal City Police Service (SVPM) at a press conference moderated by Mayor Valérie Plante on Thursday, local media reported.

Fady Dagher comes from the Ivory Coast and has Lebanese parents. He came to Canada at the age of 17, where he joined SVPM after earning a Masters in Business Administration for Managers from McGill University-HEC Montreal, where he has risen through the ranks for 25 years.

Tiped in 2015 to fill the position of President of the SVPM, he was sacked by former Mayor Denis Coderre at the final stage of the selection process. Since then, Fady Dagher has headed the Metropolitan Police Service of Longueuil (SPAL), a city south of Montreal, for five years (since 2017).

During the press conference, Dagher wished the police would work with “humility and modesty.”

In presenting his vision, he emphasized anticipation, stating that the police “must act well in advance and find solutions before crises arise”.

“They (the police) need to be more inclusive, addressing the challenges of marginalized communities, as well as those of immigration and different partners,” he stressed.

He added that police must act in “consultation” with their partners, particularly the “community”, without being “superior”.

The Chief Police Officer of the main French-speaking metropolis in North America stressed the importance of striking a “balance between prevention and repression”.

“When it comes to pure repression, guns and shootings, it’s not the time for dialogue, it’s the time to intervene. There is no cop who wants things to get out of hand. There is also no citizen who wants things to get out of hand. So we have to set up the guidelines and the tools so that we can find solutions,” he added.

“It is important to me that my husbands and wives who work in the field work in the criminal secret service. I don’t want us to go fishing, I want us to go hunting,” concluded the man considered “the outstanding communicator and most avant-garde police commissioner in Quebec.”

In response to this appointment, Saint-Michel (North Montreal district) youth forum coordinator Mimoun Mohammed Noredine, “considers very important the fact that Mr. Dagher recognizes that racial profiling exists in the work of the police and also that he fully understands the realities of the communities living on Montreal soil”.
“He’s someone who works a lot with other circles,” Noredine added.

It should be noted that the SVPM is the first municipal police service in the province of Quebec and the second in all of Canada in terms of importance.

The SVPM serves 1.7 million residents and has more than 6,000 civil and police employees.

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