MONTREAL -- Police station 11 in the NDG borough has been gone for just three weeks – and one member of the community says he's already feeling the consequences of losing it.
“I don’t go out at night anymore. I really don't,” said Peter Gillich. “Sun goes down, and I go in. I guess I learned the hard way that these streets aren't the streets I grew up with.”
Gillich said he was approached by four masked men on Oct. 3 who held him at gunpoint and pepper sprayed him before taking his money, keys and phone.
“It sucked, my face was burning, and I had no way to get into my apartment, no way to call for help,” he said. “I had no money on me, I had nothing. So I thought, well there’s a police station close by, it’s only a couple blocks. I’ll make it there and they’ll help me out.”
But whe Gillich arrived, he realized the station had closed just a week earlier to merge with the neighbouring police station on the western edge of Cote-St-Luc.
City councillor Marvin Rotrand said he's asking the city for more police presence.
“Station a car right there, in the parking lot, bring back a car, bring some police visibility into here,” he said.
Rotrand wants the city to maintain some kind of small station in the area. With 65,000 residents, he said NDG is now the largest neighbourhood in Montreal without a police station.
The city declined to comment, referring CTV News instead to the Montreal police, who have not returned our call.
“Do police stations close…? Do they just… close?” Gillich said.
He added that he’s grateful for the local pizza shop who helped him out that night, but he’d like his neighbourhood police station back.
