Glock (Signature Weapon)

This is a new post in my Signature Weapons series, about weapons that say something about the characters using them, especially but not exclusively in crime fiction. So today I am blogging about the Glock. This is the very first firearm of the series. And before I go further, a disclaimer: I know almost nothing of firearms, I'm not a gun enthusiast by any stretch of the imagination, I don't have a gun fetish either, so I am writing this as a complete outsider, but as an aspiring crime fiction writer. Now, I find Glocks interesting for a number of reasons: thematically, symbolically and practically. First, it is the service weapon of many police forces in the world, including the SQ (Sûreté du Québec). So this is often the weapon of choice of my characters. According to the TV Tropes entry on handguns, it has the reputation of being the boring but practical gun of all boring, but practical guns. It's reliable without being flashy. Also, it's an Austrian weapon, and the name is very close to the German Glocke, which means bell. I find it ironic that a weapon is thus linked to something often seen as delicate and playful, used to produce music. And yes, I am working to use this double entendre in couple of stories.

Polixe, le nounours de la SQ

Je ne sais pas si vous le savez, mais la Sûreté du Québec a une mascotte: l'ourson Polixe. Il l'ont aussi en toutou, qu'ils donnent au enfants victimes d'un traumatisme et dans d'autres occasions. Or, Wolfie depuis un certain temps a développé une obsession à propos de la police. En fait, il a décidé qu'il veut devenir policier. Il s'est aussi mis à vouloir des ours dans sa ménagerie de peluches. Alors je me suis dit que je lui achèterais un toutou Polixe, histoire de développer son appartenance à ses racines québécoises. J'ai communiqué avec la SQ via les réseaux sociaux et on m'a dit que malheureusement, la vente d'objets promotionnels a été suspensdue. On ne m'a pas précisé pourquoi. Toutefois, cette suspension est temporaire, alors j'espère que Wolfie aura son Polixe lors de notre prochain séjour au Québec.

"Le 12"

Je suis l'actualité policière québécoise et également les vidéos de la Sûreté du Québec sur YouTube. Récemment, ils ont publié sur leur vlogue une vidéo sur une pièce d'équipement qui a disparu des auto-patrouilles en 2003, le fusil de calibre 12. Communément appelé dans mon enfance, "le 12". Je ne sais pas pourquoi, mais on avait l'impression que c'était le nec plus ultra en matière d'arme à feu. Et que c'était extrêmement puissant. Enfin bref, je sais maintenant d'où l'image et l'expression nous vient.

Une photo de la Sûreté du Québec

J'ai pris cette photo sur la page Facebook de la Sûreté du Québec. Oui, je suis la page facebook de la Sûreté du Québec. Et en plus j'ai pleins de bonnes raisons de le faire, bon. Cette photo qui accompagne un post sur la rentrée scolaire et la sécurité routière me fascine pour plusieurs raisons. 1)Elle me rappelle à quel point les automnes sont magnifiques au Québec. 2)Elle me rappelle que petit loup va rentrer à l'école cette année,mais pas au Québec, et parfois ça me désole. 3)Je trouve que les "nouveaux" uniformes vert forêt (vert olive?) et noirs de la SQ et leurs "nouveaux" chars (je dis nouveaux même s'ils datent maintenant de quelques années), ben ils sont beaux en tab.

La SQ revampée

Je suis l'actualité policière québécoise régulièrement, mais il m'arrive d'être en retard dans les nouvelles, ou alors j'oublie de bloguer sur le sujet. Tout ça pour dire que j'ai appris pas plus tard qu'hier en googlant sur la Sûreté du Québec qu'ils auront de nouveaux uniformes en 2017. Je suis en retard dans les nouvelles, mais je tenais à le souligner car cette vieille nouvelle d'un futur changement de garde-robe me fascine. Allez savoir pourquoi. Bon, J'ai quand même quelques idées sur le pourquoi. J'ai une admiration particulière pour ce service de police, et d'un. Même si ma femme déteste le vert olive, surtout quand je le porte, moi je trouve ça beau. L'uniforme de la SQ, je l'ai toujours bien aimé. Mais le nouveau, avec le rajout du noir et dans le cas des chemises de plus de vert olive, bien il est encore plus cool. Des détails dans cet article du JdeM. Ils ont même un vidéo promotionnel sur leur canal YouTube. C'est un peu beaucoup quétaine, avec des airs de Robocop fleurdelisé, mais ça a son charme. Dites-moi ce que vous en pensez.

A city without a mayor

I have read the news today and I am fuming. Michael Applebaum, the interim mayor of Montreal, has been arrested for corruption. Applebaum took over after Gérald Tremblay was forced to resign because he was (rightfully) accused of being a puppet in the hands of a corrupted administration. I often blogged about Gérald Tremblay in French, a despicable idiot unable to show any kind of leadership when his city was being looted by shady businessmen and members of organised crime, of course with the helping hand of the people that had put him in power. He was also a creationist, which is unrelated but speak volumes about his character. I had respect for Michael Applebaum, who came into power promising to be mayor only until the elections, with a reputation of probity that Montreal badly needed. And now. Well, now, he was just as rotten as the administration he was from. So Montreal is now without a mayor. Again. Technically, Applebaum is still mayor of course, even though people are calling (rightfully) for his resignation. Nevertheless, Montreal is de facto without a leader. The city has been devoid of a leader of any sort for more than a decade. Pathetic. In the same time, I cannot help but feel a sort of ferocious satisfaction at the sight of all these crooks and scumbags being taken care of by the police.

La police me décourage parfois

Je pensais beaucoup de bien de Marc Parent, chef du SPVM. Je pense en général beaucoup de bien de la police, en tout cas de ces policiers, moins des officiers galonnés. Puis, à la suite de cette histoire de taupe au SPVM, le gouvernement décide de faire la chasse... aux sources qui ont révélé aux journalistes l'histoire de la taupe. La chronique de Patrick Lagacé ici, celle d'Yves Boisvert là.  Donc, la SQ enquêtera sur le SPVM pour trouver non pas où le système de sécurité a failli, mais comment le public l'a su. Et Marc Parent qui ne trouve rien à redire. Marc Parent que j'avais louangé ici. Son prédécesseur était un incapable à la loyauté déplacée, Parent est en train de se transformer en cocu content. Pitoyable. Et j'ai honte de mon enthousiasme quant à sa nomination. Je rêve d'un jour où on aura des officiers supérieurs compétents et intègres à la SQ et au SPVM. Je suis sans doute naïf.

Cops

Right now I am watching a documentary on Channel 4, Coppers, about well, the UK police force. It is a world I am both foreign to and familiar with. I first got into the police world through fiction, via the crime novels I was reading, then the TV dramas I became a fan of. It probably really started with Omertà at home, when I really started to be interested about the work of police officers. There was also the gang war of the 90s which set Montreal ablaze, and which made me more aware of the admirable work of the SQ and the SPVM (except that muppet). I blogged about it here. I became fascinated with real crime history and crime news.

A friend of mine, an army officer, once told me, when I was unemployed, that I should consider a career in the police force, since I was so much into it. It was a ridiculous suggestion. Police officers are to me what birds are to ornithologists: a subject of study and observation, but nothing I could ever think to be a part of. I love to go to crime museums (I dragged my wife to the one in Vancouver), I once chatted with two patrol officers of the SPVM in a café and asked them what type of guns they had (I learned that the SPVM cops have Walthers, the SQ ones have Glocks), I can question a police officer in details about police procedure, ranking, etc. I am fascinated with the little details of a cop's life, the lingo they use, the uniforms, the reports they have with the medias, with the judiciary, etc. I think I could write a convincing picture of police life, if I had the discipline to put my mind into it.

A legendary building in Montreal

Those who can read French among my readers have probably noticed that I blogged about the police recently. With this post, one could think that this blog is turning into a kind of "police work" chronicle. I am a big crime fiction aficionado, and through it I developed a keen interest ont real crime history and real crime news. I also developed a deep admiration for real crime fighters and what they accomplish. And Québec in general and Montreal in particular has a fascinating crime history that could make great novels.

Anyway, I am a spoiled blogger: Jazz from Hapazardlife wrote a post just for me, with a picture of one of my favourite buildings in Montreal, the headquarters of the Sûreté du Québec. As I said in my comment on her post, I love this building not because it is particularly interesting for an architectural standpoint (although it might be), but because of what it represents, because of the history it has. This is where the strategies to put an end to the Québec Biker War were made, when outside little thugs thought that Montreal was their hunting grounds, this is where Maurice "Mom" Boucher was imprisoned, this is where the men who destroyed his empire worked, this is where the first strikes of so many battles against organised crime, many of them ongoing, were ordered. The Parthenais headquarter is our Scotland Yard, our J. Edgar Hoover Building. It should be better known. So I am glad Jazz gave it a bit of exposure.

Omertà, the Québec version

As I promised (maybe for myself mainly, as I have no idea if it will interest anybody else), here is my rewriting of the Omertà entry.Back in the early/middle 90s, Québec television was pretty grim. it was full of téléromans (our version of soaps, but in prime time), which were dominating the tv screen, and meatier tv series, which were either period pieces, going from very solid (Les Filles de Caleb) to very poor (all the Filles de Caleb's clones), either drama set around a specific job (hockey, journalism), which were usually written by Réjean Tremblay, a sports journalist part-time scriptwriter who should have stuck with his daytime job. He used to put lots of swearing and some nudity for the titillating factor.

Then in 1996 came Omertà, which broke the mould of tv fiction in Québec. There were a few police dramas at the time, but Omertà was more than a mere drama set in copland. The plot of the first series was centered about an investigation from the Sûreté nationale (the rechristened Sûreté du Québec) to bring down Giuseppe Scarfo, the godfather of the Montreal maffia. The main protagonists were Pierre Gauthier, a hardboiled, dedicated policeman, and François Pelletier, an undercover cop. To complicate matters, Gauthier had started an affair with the estranged daughter of Scarfo and Pelletier was trying to protect his ex-girlfriend Denise, a former undercover cop turned junkie and prostitute (because of a severe addiciton to heroïn), while keeping his own cover safe. Yes, there were exagerations here and there, but the show managed to stay believable by depicting with authenticity the everyday work of police forces, their report with the medias and the political world, the problems with police bureaucracy and by showing a very québécois picture of organised crime, showing. Omertà brought a lot to our tv: a non-apologetic depiction of urban violence, jazzy and atmospheric score composed by Michel Cusson, a casting mixing well-known stars and new talents, a plot that was carrying us with plausibility from the world of high finances to the mean streets of Montreal, full of junkies, prostitutes, pushers and low-life mobsters. Add to this the fact that the series was aired in the middle of a real-life gang war in Montreal, when bombs were actually blown and civilians were killed and you can understand that the backdrop of Omertà was familiar in a terrifying way. The protagonists were sometimes larger than life, but the world they were thrown in was very real.

Now, about ten years after the third ans last season, Luc Dionne is writing a sequel, but it is stuck in Development Hell because of some rights issues. I hope it gets settled and the next series can be shoot. Because it was that good.