Last night, Renee Cunningham, executive director of the Seattle Police Foundation, and I rode with a Sargent from Montreal's Eclipse police unit, a specialized squad of uniformed officers who focus on certain high offender street gang members. There is a separate gang unit made up of detectives who build cases and identify gang leaders.
The gang problems in Montreal—about 20 street gangs operate citywide—involve prostitution, drugs, and illegal guns. The Eclipse squad targets gang leaders who range in age from 30 to 45 years.
Montreal's gangs include foreign gang members from Haiti, Jamaica, and other Latin American countries. Juveniles are recruited "to do the dirty work." We visited one strip club in downtown Montreal frequented by gang members. Officers checked identifications of patrons and spoke with the owner, a woman with a government day job helping juvenile offenders make better choices (that was a massive disconnect, for sure). The obvious question was whether the owner uses her day job to "recruit" dancers for her club. Police suspect she does.
About a month ago Montreal police arrested the leaders of a motorcycle street gang—many remain in jail—who controlled much of the street prostitution and drug trafficking in the downtown core of the city. In their absence, other, less organized gangs have moved to establish their own foothold.