| Sûreté du Québec | |
| Coat of Arms granted by the Canadian Heraldic Authority | |
| Badge of the Sûreté du Québec. | |
| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | May 1, 1870 |
| Legal personality | Governmental: Government agency |
| Jurisdictional structure | |
| Operations jurisdiction* | Province of Quebec, Canada |
| Map of Sûreté du Québec's jurisdiction. | |
| Size | 1,542,056 km2 |
| Population | 7,651,531 |
| General nature |
|
| Operational structure | |
| Overviewed by | The Queen in Right of Quebec |
| Headquarters | Montreal |
| Officers | 5,269[1] |
| Elected officer responsible | Jacques P. Dupuis, Ministre de la Sécurité publique |
| Agency executive | Richard Deschesnes, Directeur Général |
| Districts | 10 |
| Website | |
| http://www.sq.gouv.qc.ca | |
| Footnotes | |
| * Divisional agency: Division of the country, over which the agency has usual operational jurisdiction. | |
Sûreté du Québec or SQ (English: literally Québec Safety,[nb 1] more commonly Québec Provincial Police or QPP[nb 2] as no official English name exists) is the provincial police force for the Canadian province of Québec.[4] The headquarters of the Sûreté du Québec are located on Parthenais street in Montreal and the force employs roughly 5,163 officers.
The primary function of the Sûreté du Québec is to enforce provincial laws, some municipal bylaws, the criminal code, and many other laws throughout Quebec and to assist municipal police forces when needed. Members of the force can also act by law as forest conservation agents for example. The Sûreté du Québec is also responsible for providing municipal police services to municipalities in the province that do not otherwise have municipal or regional police services. By law, that includes municipalities with under 50,000 people. As such, the force is mainly present in small rural and suburban areas. The force also patrols provincial highways. In addition, the Sûreté du Québec can investigate any incident that involves wrong-doing by a municipal police force or a case where a police intervention caused death.
In the early 2000s, the force integrated many smaller police services (e.g., Drummondville and Saint-Hyacinthe).
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On February 1, 1870, the Quebec provincial government created the Police provinciale du Québec[5] under the direction of its first commissioner, Judge Pierre-Antoine Doucet. This new force took over the headquarters of the Quebec City municipal police, which were then disbanded, although the city relaunched a municipal force in 1877.
In 1900, two distinct provincial police forces were created: the Office of Provincial Detectives of Montreal, in response to a crime wave in that city, and the Revenue Police, whose mission was to collect taxes. In 1902, the government decided that the provincial police should no longer be directed by a judge but by an officer of the police themselves. Augustin McCarthy was chosen as the first chief drawn from the ranks of the police.
In 1922, two headquarters were established, one in Quebec City, headed by McCarthy, and one in Montreal, headed by Dieudonné Daniel Lorrain. The Office of Provincial Detectives of Montreal became part of the general provincial police in that year. The Quebec division included 35 police officers and 2 detectives.
In 1925, police officers started patrolling on motorcycles.
The Sûreté du Québec admitted in August 2007 that they had used undercover police posing as protestors at the 2007 Montebello SPP meetings. This admission was made after a video captured by protestors was widely circulated in the Canadian media and made available on YouTube [1]. Although use of undercover agents at protests of this kind is widespread, the video was especially controversial because it appeared to show one of the officers carrying a rock, suggesting to some the police may have been acting as agents provocateurs by inciting violence.
The Sûreté du Québec has been using the LPRS systems since 2009. The objective of the LPRS is to make the streets and highways more safe by removing vehicles not authorized to be on the road. The hotlist plate database can consist of the following types:
The LPRS are currently installed on 10 Sûreté du Québec vehicles. The LPRS integrator is Gtechna. Gtechna is primarily a citations issuance and management software developer which integrates mission critical technologies such as License Plate Recognition (LPR) to streamline the enforcement of moving and parking violations.
Rank insignia of the Sûreté du Québec are on contained on "slip on" sleeves worn on the epaulettes of uniform jacket or shirt shoulders.
The rank insignia:
| Rank | Sergeant | Lieutenant | Captain | Inspector |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Insignia | ||||
| Rank | Chief Inspector | Deputy Director | Director General of the SQ | |
| Insignia |
Cars:
Trucks:
Motorcycles:
Special Vehicles:
Air:
Sea:
Wild:
Miscellaneous:
Media related to [//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:S%C3%BBret%C3%A9_du_Qu%C3%A9bec Sûreté du Québec] at Wikimedia Commons