A compilation of three texts published on Sabotagemedia about last week’s riot against Police violence and the events that led to it…
Part 1: A Day of Struggle in Montreal: Innu solidarity, citizen-cops, wild protest and the pigs revenge
On Monday, March 12th, a chain of events has spanned for the whole day until late in the night.
It all began early in the day with a protest in solidarity with the Innu people who recently suffered repression from the SQ (provincial police) in their blockade of road 138 against the Hydro-Québec projects on their land. The protest of about 150 people started at Square Phillips at around 12:30 to go in front of the offices of Hydro-Quebec (where cops obviously were blocking the doors) by chanting slogans like « North Plan, Death Plan », « No Quebec, No Canada, Death to all States » while distributing leaflets on the North Plan to pedestrians. After a few speeches the people then moved to the administrative offices of the UQAM and from this point the street in front of the building was occupied with a crowd that kept growing in numbers -as a reaction to the news of a lock-out of UQAM- all up until the night where a « Creation Night » event had been planned.
In Montreal, white walls are a common denominator to fascist landlords and the wider bureaucratic patriarchy... but from another angle, blank canvases waiting to be painted
During this Creation Night, some were painting on the street, others played music, among others local band « Mise en Demeure » have played a full set of songs making fun at pacifists and cops. Many were drinking beer sitting on a part of the furniture from the UQAM building ended up in the street; chairs, desks, tables and sofas.
Around 11 PM, tension has started to rise as the citizen-cops started to attempt a clean up and enforcing the law to « put back things at their place » as others kept taking the furniture out in the street. A person ripped chairs from the hands of a hooded comrade and attempted to rip his mask off, which got him a well-deserved punch in the face. It’s simple : if you act like cops you are joining the enemy so you will be treated as such. Wanna play cops? Face the consequences.
After a short confrontation between the citizen-cops and the masked men, a crowd of about 200 people detached itself and went strolling in the street shouting anti-pacifist slogans and leaving on their tracks many walls and one cop car covered with anti-police and circled A graffiti. When the crowd arrived near the building of La Presse -the most mainstream bourgeois, reactionary newspaper in Quebec, one of Quebec’s « Fourth Branch » of the State- its windows we shattered to bits (the news outlet itself was forced to report on it… downplaying it as a mere « isolated » act… of +200 protesters!) and once more the citizen-cops or undercovers -the only difference being their paycheck- showed up and attacked a masked comrade, but this time the masked people fought back collectively and, defending their comrades, pushed back the attack. The crowd then dispersed not long after with any arrests, even though there are rumors that one was arrested during the protest.
A bit later at around 1 AM, about fifteen people who were chilling out drinking beer in a collective space received a visit from an entire cops squad. The situation quickly escalated seemingly after a bottle of beer was seen outside (???). Many people were sprayed, about twenty cops rushed in aggressively as if it was a raid, with batons in their hands, some in riot gear and with a dog. There has been five arrests. Outside the riot squad was deployed for dispersing the people who gathered at the street corner.
Social war and complicity!
Part 2: Kidnapping, pre-emptive arrests and Hollywood-style fascism
This is related to events that happened on March 15th, a few hours before the anti-police protest that became famous in the media these last few days.
On March 15h, around Noon, a comrade was kidnapped by policemen in plain clothes as she was doing her morning jugging run near her place, in the Hochelaga neighborhood. As she was exiting a backstreet, her run was interrupted par the arrival of a grey family minivan. A tall and muscular man came out of the minivan. At the same time, another car rushed in diagonally, and a third one, from behind in the backstreet. Our comrade was cornered. The tall and muscular man addressed her by saying : « Hi ***, I am an agent of the Montrea Police departement. You’re under arrest, we have a warrant against you. You must follow us. »
Our comrade then answer : Who are you? What is your warrant? Why are you arresting me? Where are you taking me? » as the undercover cop was putting her handcuffs, right in the street. Our comrade screamed in the hope of being heard by pedestrians. Two minutes later, she was in the mini-van, on its way to the East Operations Center escorted by two undercover cops who refused to explain the motives of her arrest warrant. In fact, they completely ignored what these were.
Arrived at the Est Operations Center, cops seem confused on the motives of the arrest warrant. Our friend called her lawyer, who tries to set the records straight. Her and the lawyer are bot amazed, since her judicial file was up to date.
At last, the cops reveal the motives of this warrant. It was about a warrant related to her absence at the court during an order that was to happen a month and a half back, on January 31st 2012, over a bullshit breach of condition that happened on September 12th 2011. Our friend and her lawyer both ignored the existence of this alleged court appointment. Hence why she did not show up. Following her absence at this alleged date of court, an arrest warrant was emitted against her, on February 2012. (We are sorry for the ambiguity of details… our friend desires to not expose her criminal record too openly).
A month and a half has passed and now it’s March 15th, international day against police brutality, that this warrant has been used.
It’s by meeting with the chief in(ve)stigator for the operations of repression planned for controlling the protest on March 15th that our comrade was confirmed that her arrest was linked to the March 15th demo.
The man in question was named inspector D’Amour (or L’Amour). Bragging to have 28 years of experience in the police, this bastard said to be in charge for the case of the March 15th protest and confirmed to our friend that the targeted arrests would be part of this years repression of this year’s protest. So, these morons waited for March 15th to use their warrant against our friend (a legally obtained warrant, but that was completely unnecessary in this context and was openly used to intimidate her). The next morning, on March 16th, our friend was brought to municipal court, where a judge released her under the promise that she would be present at every upcoming court orders.
According to our comprehension, the undercover cop cars were parked in front of our friend’s residence waiting for her to get out, for a period of time we don’t know, so they’d then be stalking her.
We also know that there are other places/persons who are being followed, watched, taken pictures of. We’re not intent to feed paranoia, but want to share this experience so each and everyone stays vigilant. These morons have nothing better to do in their lives than stalk us in our everyday life. Fuck them.
This scene was worthy of a Hollywood movie. As far as we know, there has been other targeted arrests, but none of this kind. So it’s very important to make this info spread because the situation is very worrying. These filthy cops must know that their intimidation tactics does not impress us and that, together, our though hearts are stronger than everything.
Part3: March 15th, a Night of Reckoning
On the evening of March 15 (international day against police brutality) in Montreal, although riot pigs were all over, they clearly lost control of the city center for several hours.
Already in the afternoon, the Berri-UQAM station was filled with riot cops inside and outside, the sky with helicopters, patrols of pigs in the streets and later riot squads and horsemen. Even with this display of force they weren’t up to the task. Proof that here as elsewhere revolt is more than possible. We can even thank in part the cops on Thursday for the riot, they fed it and gave it strength.
They gave it strength when they charged the demo of a few thousand people on Sherbrooke after twenty minutes of sloganeering and anti-cop graffiti, which resulted in several pacifist hippie parasites and the self-described students with the bourgeois leftist mentality to go home. The ones who wanted more than to take a walk wondering what the fuck they were doing in another pathetic ritual of slogans, divided into smaller mobile groups that dispersed and reformed to fucked shit up all night long.
The cops also fueled it when they attacked with their arsenal the people downtown, on St Catherine. From then on the rage was unleashed on the streets. There were probably also many bored young people who are regularly targets of profiling and saw there a great opportunity for their turn to piss on the cops and it wasn’t to long for it to come. As this same line of cops was advancing they took a volley of stones, bottles and a molotov and in an attempt to block the road further, the riot pigs fled from the crowd coming on each side. Moments later, while bins were flying down the street and into a few shop windows, the crowd fell on a brand new cop car, pigs included. The car was attacked with projectiles and you could see the terror and panic in the face of the two cops as they fled the crowd charging on the car. Later a vandalized cop car was flipped over.
By late evening a crowd gathered again at the Berri Square, where it had all begun, to leave once again. It’s when the crowd dispersed to Maisonneuve and Ontario that the cops surrounded people on the sidewalk to make a mass arrest. They held the crowd of about 200 people surrounded for several hours and then filled some buses and took them to a police station in Langelier, far from downtown, where they proceeded to identify people and give them tickets for “gathering endangering peace” and release them, but not before having photographed them one-by-one. There was also during the day and evening several random arrests and others targeted.
March 15th is everyday!
The hatred for this rotten world and its cops, we carry it every single day!
Translated by Anabraxas (« To the victor goes the spoils of war, fuckers! »)
and Sabotagemedia
Antidéveloppement 