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Mayor chooses Philippe Pichet as Montreal’s new chief

Jul 24 2015
MONTREAL – Montreal’s next police chief is a 24-year veteran of the force with two management degrees, and he’s been the point man for his department on some of its most hot-button files in the last few years.

Mayor Denis Coderre announced late Friday he’ll nominate Philippe Pichet, currently an assistant director of the Montreal police, to succeed Marc Parent as chief.

The nomination, which is the culmination of a two-month selection process, now goes to city council and the island-wide agglomeration council that includes the island suburbs for ratification the week of Aug. 17. Quebec’s public-safety department will then have to sign off on the choice.

“He’s the type of person who, in my opinion, demonstrates good versatility, good experience. … He is the type of person who will grow within his new functions,” Coderre said of Pichet. “When you look at all the contenders, I think that Mr. Pichet was the one for the job.”

A selection committee had recommended two candidates to the mayor. Coderre met with all five of them himself, after which he selected Pichet.

The four other candidates were Patrick Lalonde, Fady Dagher, Mario GuÈrin and Bernard Lamothe.

Pichet was widely considered one of the front-runners for the position after Parent announced in May he would not seek a second term after his five years are up in September.

But city hall was reserved when it came to detail on Pichet’s background and qualifications on Friday, refusing to provide a biography to the media or to allow interviews with its pick.

Some of what is known about Pichet is that he was born in Montreal and has a management certificate from the …cole des hautes Ètudes commerciales de MontrÈal and a master’s degree from the …cole nationale d’administration publique. He joined the police force in 1991, and acceded to its management ranks in 2005. Pichet obtained his master’s degree from …NAP around 2010 while working for the police force, following in the footsteps of another previous Montreal police chief, Jacques Duchesneau.

Among his initial postings as a manager, Pichet was commander of police station 45 in RiviËre-des-Prairies-Pointe-aux-Trembles borough.

In 2010, he testified on behalf of the Montreal Police Department before a special Senate committee on anti-terrorism in Ottawa to explain Montreal police procedure and training. At that point, Pichet was a commander of the operational planning division of the police department’s counter-terrorism and emergency measures section.

But it was the 2012 student protests against government-planned tuition fee hikes that gave Pichet something of a public profile. He was the point man for the department when charges of police brutality were levelled by protesters. In one incident, a CEGEP student was photographed with a bloody, swollen eye after riot police allegedly fired a stun grenade over a crowd of protesters.

Pichet was also the spokesperson trotted out by his department in 2013 when images of a drinking marathon by a gang of youth, who drank beer, urinated, vomited, vandalized and exposed themselves over several hours at 18 stations in the mÈtro system without police intervention went viral on social media.

The Montreal Police Brotherhood, which is locked in battle with Coderre and his administration over a new provincial law that will roll back public pensions and is in negotiations for a new collective agreement, said in a statement the new police chief has a challenge ahead of him.

“Enormous challenges await the next chief,” Brotherhood president Yves Francoeur said in the statement. “The first is clearly improvement of labour relations. Having the necessary resources to fulfill the Montreal Police Department’s mission is also crucial.”

(Montreal Gazette)