Montreal anti-police brutality protests end in arrests

March 17, 2010

Amy Minsky, The Concordian (Concordia University)

SUITING UP Protesters on the streets of Montreal try to avoid arrest while
raising awareness about police brutality.

MONTREAL (CUP) — Havoc broke out within minutes of Montreal’s 14th annual
anti-police brutality march on Monday, resulting in about one hundred
arrests.

Arresting large groups, riot police gathered people and cornered them
against a wall. The two sides remained in a standoff for over an hour
before the protesters were loaded into city buses and carted to a police
station in the city’s east end.

Michael Connors, a Concordia University journalism student, was in a
standoff against police with about 30 other people, at the corner of
Hochelaga Street and Prefontaine Street.

“Basically none of the people in that group were the ones performing any
of the protests,” Connors said from the police station. “It felt more like
we were used as examples for the rest of the crowd. We were unlucky, in
the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Connors, alongside everybody else who was cuffed, searched, and led to one
of three city buses, received a citation for being at an illegal assembly.

Crowds of demonstrators gathered outside the Pie-IX subway station in the
east end of Montreal beginning around 5 p.m. on March 15.

Before leading the crowd south along Pie-IX Boulevard, organizers made an
appeal to both the demonstrators and police to remain calm and peaceful.

The plea was quickly forgotten.

A smaller group of demonstrators, dressed head-to-toe in black clothing,
were seen coming from a driveway on Pie-IX Boulevard, many reaching into
garbage cans and under vehicles, grabbing full garbage and grocery bags.

Minutes later, after turning east on to Ontario Street, a BB gun shot was
fired. Paintballs were fired as the marchers encountered the first group
of police, dressed in full riot gear, with some on horseback.

As a warning, police tapped their billy clubs against the shields.

In response, firecrackers were launched at police, eventually provoking a
brawl that saw four or five men, alleged to be undercover cops, flee the
pack of marchers.

Though organizers never revealed the path for the march, police seemed
prepared, armed and ready at almost every turn.

Demonstrators were chanting, “Fuck the police,” “Liberer nos camarades,”
and calling police “assassins.”

Some said the police presence was too strong at the march, which has
developed a reputation for becoming violent.

“Sometimes the police act violently towards protesters, and that’s
unacceptable,” said Stefan Christoff, a social activist, musician and
journalist based in Montreal. “But really, what I think is important today
is why so many people are protesting, and why those numbers are increasing
every March 15.”

Approximately 200 people participated in the 1998 march, while last year’s
event drew over 2,000.

Last year, over 220 people were arrested. Six police cruisers were
vandalized, some of them being lit on fire.