Violence in Montreal: | CTV News [Video]

Montreal police Chief Fady Dagher made a plea Thursday to parents of youth being recruited by criminal gangs: if officers knock on their door with information that their children are headed for trouble, please hear them out.

Dagher said gangs are increasingly preying on children as young as 12.

“We can save them, we can stop them from going down this criminal path,” he told a news conference in Montreal. “But there are parents who don’t believe us — they don’t believe they have a problem at home.”

He also had a message for merchants being extorted with young people often enlisted to torch or shoot up businesses that don’t go along with demands. Dagher urged business owners to contact police “at the beginning, not at the end.”

Cmdr. Francis Renaud, head of the force’s organized crime unit, said there were between 30 and 40 reported extortion cases across Montreal …