Collège de Maisonneuve asks for anti-radicalization help
Cmdr. Ian Lafrenière says police officer will temporarily stand in for social worker
Collège de Maisonneuve — the Montreal post-secondary institution that made headlines last month when some of its students reportedly left to join jihadis in Syria — has asked the city for help with preventing radicalization.
Cmdr. Ian Lafrenière of Montreal police told CBC Daybreak on Friday that the school had made a formal request for assistance to the city's new radicalization prevention centre two days ago.
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He said an officer will be on campus three days a week to help teach professors and students some of the signs a person may be becoming radicalized.
The officer, Lafrenière said, will be a temporary stand-in until the radicalization prevention centre is fully staffed and organized.
Then, a social worker or some other kind of community worker, will take the police officer's place.
He said the officer is not there to conduct a police investigation.
"I don't think they will see that as a police presence. She's not even in uniform. She's there to help and she's wearing two hats: She's a police officer and she's also a social worker," Lafrenière said.
Lafrenière does say, if the officer is presented with information that indicates some sort of immediate threat, she would bring it to police who would use other resources to conduct an investigation.