A community group in Montreal North is offering up full-time intervention workers to deal with the latest explosion of violence in the neighbourhood.
The worker would be available around the clock to head off rioting of the type that broke out on Tuesday evening when youths set fires, ransacked businesses and pelted police with rocks and bottles.
The group Cafe Jeunesse Muticulturel will run the program, and the funding is said to be imminent.
Cmdr. Roger Belair of police station 39 said the decision to deploy the workers is part of a longstanding strategy to improve relations with young people in the borough.
"They (the workers) can go before us in the park and talk to the youths and say 'hey, stay calm,' " Belair told CTV News on Friday.
"We have to use this organization to help us. We don't want to make an intervention in the park every time."
Skirmishes
Nine people were charged in Tuesday's violence, which brought back memories of similar mayhem last August 8 following the police shooting of teenager Fredy Villanueva.
But the community group and police both agree that the presence of intervention workers on Tuesday prevented further violence. Many youths agreed to leave the scene before things escalated.
