{"id":1072,"date":"2008-07-27T23:53:22","date_gmt":"2008-07-28T04:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingmontreal.ca\/2008\/07\/27\/policing-our-parks\/"},"modified":"2013-01-21T11:30:04","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T16:30:04","slug":"policing-our-parks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/07\/27\/policing-our-parks\/","title":{"rendered":"Policing our parks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In last week’s edition of Hour, Jamie O’Meara in last week’s Hour touched on the behaviour of Montreal’s police in city parks, and in particular their arbitrary enforcement of closing hours, which last from 11pm to 6am in most parks and midnight to 6am in others. (The article has already been taken offline, but you can see a Google cache version here<\/a>.) I’m willing to bet that most Montrealers have made a late-night excursion into some park or another without any trouble. Every so often, though, an unlucky few are targeted by police, who seem to exercise their authority on a whim. <\/p>\n

This is part of larger problem concerning park regulations and how they are applied. For the most part, a huge range of behaviour is tolerated in Montreal’s parks—think of all the picnickers eating their meals with beer or wine, or all of the pot smoking that goes on during the tam-tams—but an ever-mounting burden of new park rules makes it easier for cops to randomly target people, or to harass those they don’t like. This usually means that the police will take it upon themselves to make life difficult for marginal people like street kids and the homeless, but otherwise ordinary people are picked on, too, like the Concordia student who was fined $628<\/a> for sitting on a marble ledge in Berri Square.<\/p>\n

Parks need rules, but we need to rethink our approach to regulating our parks. Something needs to change — let’s start with the opening hours. We don’t close our streets at night, so why do we close our parks? And since we’re on the topic, here’s another nuisance: why do police drive their cruisers through parks? It’s not uncommon to see a police car parked in St. Louis Square or Lafontaine Park, two offers inside keeping an eye on things. Not only does this obstruct the walking path, it’s an affront to the entire notion that parks are meant for pedestrians and cyclists. What ever happened to walking the beat?<\/p>\n

Photo by Mike Gericke<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In last week’s edition of Hour, Jamie O’Meara in last week’s Hour touched on the behaviour of Montreal’s police in city parks, and in particular their arbitrary enforcement of closing hours, which last from 11pm to 6am in most parks and midnight to 6am in others. (The article has already been taken offline, but youContinue reading “Policing our parks”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7831,3537],"tags":[7,1321,556,2660,1585,125,1969,49,2659,788,302],"class_list":["post-1072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-parks","tag-behaviour","tag-berri-square","tag-google","tag-jamie-omeara","tag-mike-gericke","tag-montreal","tag-montreals-police","tag-squares-and-parks","tag-police-car","tag-st-louis-square","tag-usd"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPolicing our parks - Spacing Montreal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/07\/27\/policing-our-parks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Policing our parks - Spacing Montreal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In last week’s edition of Hour, Jamie O’Meara in last week’s Hour touched on the behaviour of Montreal’s police in city parks, and in particular their arbitrary enforcement of closing hours, which last from 11pm to 6am in most parks and midnight to 6am in others. 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