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Police mind control: it's all in your head Opinions on Montreal's new community police ranged from cheery appreciation to outright loathing at a meeting held this week to gauge public opinion on the new policing model. >> Among the participants on the pro side were a Université de Montréal criminologist, a Montreal-West town commissioner, a woman who said she wasn't going to let drug addicts ruin her neighbourhood and an elderly Côte-St-Luc resident who said he appreciated the security tips the police offered him and the other residents of his building after it had been robbed. >> On the con side were members of the Coalition opposée à la brutalité policière (COBP), who denounced it for its unequal treatment of more marginal communities, black community leader Dan Philip, who passionately denounced what he saw as an adoption of U.S.-style policing, and a man who said more repressive police control would drive community activism underground and foster political violence. >> Opinions flew fast and furious among the roughly 30 people who attended. "Community-oriented policing is the equivalent of psychological operation in the military. The technique is to control the thinking of a population or an enemy," said one COBP member, quoting from the U.S. police union publication The Journal of Law and Order. >> "As long as we behave ourselves we won't have any trouble," countered the elderly man from Côte-St-Luc. No consensus was reached, but organizer Marvin Rotrand said he would raise some of the issues discussed at the next public security meeting on October 7. --Jacquie Charlton
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