Some very young Montrealers have been the protagonists of violent stories recently.
A 14-year-old was found dead near a Hells Angels club in the Beauce region in September after he had travelled there, according to Radio-Canada sources, armed with an AK-47-style assault rifle.
Seven teenagers aged 14 to 17 were arrested earlier this month because police believe they were involved in violent crimes.
And three 14-year-olds were arrested last week in connection with an alleged arson attempt in Verdun.
Experts are observing a new phenomenon and have been trying to uncover the reasons for it: the age of offenders is lower and crimes more violent.
Community workers like Mohamed Mimoun, a co-ordinator with the Forum jeunesse de Saint-Michel, believes that the issue began before the pandemic, but worsened afterward.
He says the 2021 shooting of 15-year-old Meriem Boundaoui sounded the alarm.
She was killed while sitting in the passenger seat of a parked car in Montreal’s Saint-Léonard borough. Montreal police said at the time that she had no connection to the conflict between the two groups involved.
A need for ‘family’ or ‘easy money’
Vulnerability is a common thread in youth crime, according to Mimoun.
He notes that the youth who commit these crimes can be victims of bullying and looking for a “family to protect them,” or influenced by a lifestyle that revolves around “easy money” while they or their loved ones are struggling.
But why are there younger offenders?
Lawyers, social workers and even a content creator are raising concerns about younger teens in Montreal getting wrapped up in criminal activities.
Mimoun thinks this is linked to the fact that kids have access to social media earlier than before, and therefore have the opportunity to communicate with recruiters remotely. He says more young teens are also now looking for work.
“At that age, unfortunately, when the need is there, the criminal world has been able to exploit that to recruit kids who are 14,” said Mimoun.
He adds that there are different ways of recruiting young people, including through platforms like the messaging app Telegram.
“A friend of a friend will invite you into the group, you’re going to find clear offers to commit things and you’re going to choose which one you want,” he said.
Young people seeking contracts
Youth also help gangs recruit other young people around schools and parks, according to the community worker.
But other experts say some throw themselves into the lion’s den.
Burt Pierre, a youth worker with Équipe RDP, says some youth look for “missions” and that the contracts are “attractive,” with pay from $2,500 to $20,000 or more, depending on the type of crime.
“Sometimes they’re crammed together, eight people in one house, three to four per room. They have no privacy. They’re looking for well-being, and the search for well-being means the search for money,” he said.
“The search for money means: ‘If I can’t get it at school, if I can’t get it at work, well, then it’ll be in the streets.'”
He said all kinds of contracts can be found online: stealing a car, burning down an empty house, burning down a house with one or more people inside and murder.
Kingslyne Toussaint, director general of Équipe RDP, says recruiters use the shorter sentences typically given to youth as “leverage.”
“[They say] ‘Anyway, you’re 14 years old, your sentence won’t be the same.’ So let’s go, if it’s to spend two weeks in there, there’s no problem,” she said.
Arms race
Crimes committed by youth, according to community workers, are also becoming more violent.
“In the late ’80s and early ’90s, we used to see a lot of knife, retractable baton and machete attacks. We didn’t have access to firearms like we do now,” said Pierre.
Pierre says the arms race started around the time of the pandemic. He says people made a lot of money with fraud related to the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), and they’ve armed themselves to “protect that money.”
Lawyer Valérie Lafortune says she’s now seeing kids with no criminal record being detained at 14 years old.
“[It] proves just how serious the offence must be for him to remain in prison,” she said.
She added it’s tempting for young people from precarious backgrounds to be offered money, sometimes thinking they can help their families.
In the last nine months, 1,072 files have been opened at Montreal’s legal aid for minors charged with murder, firearm possession, attempted murder, theft, arson and other crimes, according to lawyer Gilles Trudeau. That’s about 100 more files than last year.
A file may contain several offences and those numbers don’t include all offences, nor do they include the number of clients charged.
Toussaint says this is phenomenon should concern everyone.
“It could be our child’s friend, cousin, etc.,” she said. “The whole system, the whole community, is affected.”
“The street always has a listening ear and a place for them. So if we, as parents, close the door, the street will always take them in,” said her colleague, Pierre.