The right hour: Plante is wrong on the shots

Flush out fake news, verify politicians' statements, find the real numbers: our Bureau of Investigation, based in Montreal, Quebec and Ottawa, specializes in the art of establishing the facts. Every Saturday, our journalists and researchers present their findings to help you see more clearly in the news of the week.

THE STATEMENT

Thursday, in an interview with Paul Larocque on the TV show The balance sheet, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante said that he ” there are 30% fewer shots than last year at the same date. »  

THE FACTS

Mrs Plante is wrong. It is based on a report by La Presse which reports a 30% decrease in incidents of shootings occurring on the territory of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal, but only for the months of June to September. When we take all the events of the first 10 months of 2022 and compare them to the statistics for the year 2021, the difference is 22% less. And that's not counting the months of November and December of this year.

The number of firearm discharges without victims is about 25% lower in 2022 than in 2021. As for attempted murders by firearms, there are 17% fewer this year compared to last year. last year, and 12% fewer gun murders.  

We will have to wait until January to do a full assessment and see if there is a real downward trend for the last months of the year.

By observing the number of incidents involving firearms for the previous years, we see that 2022 has already greatly exceeded the balance sheets of 2019 and 2020, which were respectively 84 and 133. 

Here is a summary of the number of homicides, attempted murders and firearm discharges in Montreal.

2019: 84

2020: 133

2021: 213

< p>2022: 166*

Source: SPVM.
*As of October 31, 2022