Gruesome crime scene photos - and how they disappeared from the Quebec landscape - a brief history of police-media relations in Montreal

 

 Grisly, gruesome photos of murder scenes were long on prominent view at every Montreal corner store, as police allowed crime tabloids to snap and publish horrible photos of murder victims.
   It's one of those now surprisingly extinct Quebec traditions, like excessive smoking and drinking beer, customs that many assumed would never disappear.
  Not only are those splashy crime tabloids gone, police have since kept reporters very far outside the bright yellow crime scene perimeter tape.
  So how did this radical change occur?
  Montreal police and media have manipulated each since the first orange was squeezed at the Julep and before Baldy Northcott tripped over his first blue line.
    Longtime criminologist and crime press journalist Georges Andre Parent offered a brief, insightful and useful summary of the history of the news media and police in a 1987 academic paper.
    Here's his take:
    Police and reporters got along great until the 1960s when the peace and love era saw journalists start questioning police for the first time.
    Starting in the 1950s police encouraged crime panic because they believed it could increase support for a higher police budget. Police officers were paid a pittance until their illegal strike of 1968.
    Parent notes that some SQ and Montreal officers were caught selling info to celebrated crime reporters, leading them to be transferred, fired or forced to resign.
    The system, although corrupt, seemed to benefit all, as officers were able to get favourable coverage, journalists got scoops and made into stars and the public got to know all the gory details it craved.
    Montreal attempted to stop this from recurring by creating a formal media relations bureau manned by officers trained with a U of M Public relations certificates. High profiled police officers were pressured to stop talking to the press.
    The practices were even formally banned in the police ethics and discipline code, which in Section II article 8, c- banned officers from "personally gaining from sharing information" and h-"attempting to gain media notoriety. 
   Jean Paul Gilbert, who had a university background, took over as police chief (1965-70) and attempted to rehabilitate the police's public image but his successor Marcel Saint Aubin (1970-71) a career officer, didn't prioritize communication with journalists. Saint-Aubin was responding to a grassroots police impulse from the patrol officers, which traditionally dislike journalists, as they rarely look good in newspaper reports.
   An epic power struggle within the force occurred in 1971 when two factions battled it out. as the Police Chief Jean-Jacques Saulnier (whose brother was executive committee chairman Laurent Saulnier) battled against the city's police security council.
    Saulnier attempted to gain the upper hand by leaking information to La Presse crime reporter Michel Auger. His rivals countered by feeding Le Devoir's Jean Pierre Charbonneau a story about Saulnier taking a bribe. Saulnier was discredited and quit.
   Police looked upon media with great suspicion following that debacle.
   Some low points in Montreal media's relationship with cops include a Radio-Canada cameraman suing police for assault after he was manhandled trying to shoot a hostage situation. A CFCF cameraman and technician also sued police for similar reasons during the 1980 referendum.
   By 1987 the police media relations team consisted of three agents, a Sergeant Lieutenant, and a director. Officers were still permitted to speak to journalists.
   Some epic cases of mismanagement of media relations include the provincial police's handling of the Charles Marion kidnapping in 1977. Police were so convinced that the 82-day kidnapping was a hoax dreamed up by Marion himself that they sent journalists Claude Poirier and Normand Maltais to bring the $500,000 random money to the kidnappers, except - unbeknownst to them - inside the suitcases were press clippings rather than money.
    Police endangered their lives, as it turned out that the kidnapping was a real thing.
   The SQ also had a field day after a half dozen Hells Angels from the Laval chapter were found killed.
   Montreal police were denied the resources such as wiretaps and informants budget required to investigate, while the SQ tossed large sums at the case, opening up an elaborate mobile media unit that offered colour photos and other concerning the affair to journalists.
   But meanwhile the SQ was embarrassed after the licence bureau SAAQ released statistics that demonstrated a fast-rising toll of traffic fatalities in the province (1982-34k, 83-37k 84 41k) during a time when they were handing out fewer and fewer tickets  (1982- 427k 1983-410k, 1984-265k a total lowered by a strike).
   Quebec's Justice Minister Mark-Andre Bedard had ambitions to take over the PQ party leadership and didn't dare to punish the SQ in any way.
   So the SQ attempted to return to public favour by trotting out Yves "Apache" Trudeau who confessed to killed 43 people in the dozen years prior.
   The SQ continued boosting the biker scare by devoting an entire edition of their Surete magazine (Aug 1986) to biker gangs. A judge charged the magazine editors with contempt of court.
   The SQ was beleaguered by constant lawsuits, including one laid by a Justice Ministry bureaucrat who the SQ told media was being investigated for wrongdoing, when he was not.
   The constant improvisation and amateurism led to the stricter controls which reigns now.