Tag: SPVM

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A change in tactics from the SPVM

Photo by Keith Race
Photo by Keith Race

The Montreal Police are enacting mass arrests through a municipal bylaw in an effort to stifle protests in the downtown core over the last few weeks.

The Service de police de la Ville de Montréal has come under fire from some demonstrators who feel the police are stifling their right to protest.

“The exercise of democracy has to be done without disruption to ensure that no unfortunate event take place. Those who cause disruptions have to be excluded from demonstrations, so that individuals who want to be heard can do so peacefully,” municipal bylaw P-6 states.

A few hundred people set out from Place Émilie-Gamelin last Friday night for a demonstration meant to remember the one-year anniversary of the massive March 22 student protest that took place last spring. The protest ended with 294 arrests including journalists from The Concordian and The Link.

Police officers kettled demonstrators at the intersection of de Maisonneuve Blvd. and St-Timothée St. before announcing the protest was over. Kettling is a riot tactic employed during protests to control crowds; police section off demonstrators from all sides before containing individuals to a limited area with only one exit in order to swiftly end the protest.

“I’m still trying to understand why journalists would be fined,” Hera Chan, the photo editor at The McGill Daily said. “We’re all members of community, however I don’t think it’s a correct method, I don’t believe police should use this method — at the end of the day who is going to write the story?”

Chan explains that even though she identified herself as a member of the press, she was still arrested and fined last Tuesday night during a student protest.

“I do see a change in enforcing the law, in much stricter fashion, trying to do mass arrests of entire protests,” Chan said. “As you can see by numbers, people who come out to the streets has gone down drastically but numbers arrested have not.”

Many people who were arrested received a fine of $637 under the violation of municipal bylaw P-6 according to the media relations of the SPVM. According to bylaw P-6, protesters must “provide by writing, eight hours in advance, the date, time, the duration, location, and if applicable, the route of the demonstration.” However none of the protests did so and so were declared illegal.

The law also states that individuals are prohibited to participate in a demonstration assembly, parade or group with your face covered, such as by a scarf, hood or a mask. The municipal bylaw was simultaneously passed at the same time as Bill 78 last year in order to limit demonstrations.

However, while the municipal bylaw was not quick to be applied last year, there has been a noticeable change in the last few weeks.

“I thought the protest was really disgraceful and disgusting how they arrested more than 250 people after five minutes of the protest,” said Université du Québec à Montréal student Camila Martinez-Lisle. “No disrupting activity had been made apart from walking in the street and chanting slogans.”

Martinez-Lisle believes that the SPVM has “been more and more aggressive and violent against protesters.”

Similarly, Montreal’s annual anti-police brutality march this year led to many arrests. More than 250 people were detained and ticketed the night of March 15.

Christopher Curtis, a former Concordia student and current reporter for The Gazette, was also kettled and detained during demonstrations for hours.

“For better or worse, the police will be deciding who is a legitimate media source and who eats a $600 ticket,” Curtis said. “And I think that means student media and some lesser known media outlets can’t be at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Curtis explained that while in the kettle he asked protesters why they came and many said that some of their friends didn’t come because they weren’t willing to pay another $600 fine.

Several thousand protesters also took to the streets on March 5 for the education summit where Premier Pauline Marois announced the indexation of tuition fees by approximately three per cent per year indefinitely. The protest resulted in 72 people being detained, 62 protesters being ticketed for unlawful assembly and 10 arrested during clashes police officers.

The SPVM was unavailable to comment by press time.

With files from Kalina Laframboise

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Protesting police brutality

Photo by Keith Race
Photo by Keith Race

Montreal’s 17th annual anti-police brutality march was a disjointed and hectic affair that led to the arrest of more than 250 people.

Service de police de la Ville de Montréal officers descended on the Friday evening protest early, separating groups of demonstrators and making arrests moments before the event began.

Officers clashed with small groups of protesters on Ste-Catherine St. near Place-des-Arts several times between 5 and 7 p.m.. The busy area was crowded with police, demonstrators and bystanders as officers used tear gas and concussion grenades to disperse crowds and form perimeters.

The protest informally ended when more than 200 people were placed under mass arrest on Ste-Catherine St. near Sanguinet St. where two large groups were surrounded by police, handcuffed and taken away in city buses. Kettling, a police tactic often used during last spring’s demonstrations against tuition fee increases and Bill 78, sees protesters contained within a limited area and provides only a single option of exiting. Journalists from several media outlets, including The Concordian and The Link, were also detained but released shortly after.

According to the SPVM, the majority of those arrested were in violation of municipal bylaw P-6. The controversial law, which was passed in the midst of last year’s student protests, forbids the covering of one’s face during a demonstration and demands that authorities be provided with a protest itinerary lest participation be declared illegal.

Those detained were given tickets and released before midnight.

The historically violent march began on a tense note with several hundred people gathered at the corners of Ontario St. and St. Urbain St. amidst a heavy police presence. Cavalry and riot squads attempted to block off the roads leading out of the square while other units moved through the crowd, searching protestors and making preventive arrests.

“You can see from the police here that the SPVM are becoming more efficient as a paramilitary force, and the problem is that this is exactly what people are protesting against,” said demonstrator Marc-Antoine Bergeron. “Evidently, the police don’t want this protest to even take place.”

The march was declared illegal minutes after 5 p.m. on the basis that a planned itinerary was not provided to police, and demonstrators were ordered to disperse.

At that point the march began to make its way south on St. Urbain St., but did not reach the end of the block. Police charged the group, breaking it into smaller factions that were then forced to flee a Sûreté du Quebec riot squad that materialized out of an underground parking garage.

The tactic disorganized the demonstrators, and they did not manage to re-form as a large collective. Smaller, splintered groups were confronted by police for the rest of the evening.

Twenty-two of the arrested face criminal charges that include obstruction of justice, disturbing the peace, outstanding arrest warrants and possession of incendiary objects. Two police officers were injured during the evening’s events.

The anti-brutality march has traditionally been notorious for violence. More than 200 people were arrested at last year’s event, at which a police cruiser was overturned and windows of businesses along the march’s route were smashed.

Police prepared for the worst Friday morning, going so far as to hand out flyers downtown warning the public to avoid the protest. By the march’s end, a few patrol cars that had been damaged with bricks were the only acts of vandalism reported.

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Anti-police brutality march remains calm despite tension

Photo by Kalina Laframboise.
Photo by Kalina Laframboise.

The anti-police brutality protest, notorious for its violent turnout, was mostly peaceful and recorded no arrests Saturday night.

Following months of continuous student protests, roughly 200 protesters gathered at Place Émilie-Gamelin before marching through the streets of the downtown core to condemn Montreal Police’s use of excessive force.

Demonstrators were notably present to denounce a recent mass dismissal of complaints against police behaviour filed during the student conflict.

“This year’s protest is mainly about the irregularities within police ethics,” said protester and Dawson Student Union Director of external affairs Nicholas Di Penna. “When people give in complaints and they are simply refused it means there are problems of introspection within the police and we ask why isn’t there more control over police brutality.”

According to the protest’s Facebook event page, the ethics commissioner of the Service de Police de Montréal brushed off 46 per cent of the complaints filed against officers during the student strike movement. As a result, demonstrators are concerned that the accused officers will not face sanctions but instead receive a slap on the wrist or the alleged victims will have the opportunity to “express his or her feelings to the accused officer.”

The Montreal Police’s ethics commissioner could not be reached for comment due to the holiday weekend.

According to the Huffington Post Quebec, the reason behind the dismissals are either a lack of information in order to proceed with an investigation, or the alleged victim dropping the case.

The Montreal Police’s Ethics Commissioner Louise Letarte also said that the number of dismissed complaints might increase as the department reviewed only 149 out of the total 193 complaints received related to the student conflict. So far, 60 complaints will lead to further investigation for which the result will appear in spring 2013.

Angered by the dismissals and feeling powerless against a police force individuals believe used excessive violence in interventions, some protesters expressed their concerns over the SPVM’s ability to exercise control over its own officers and to sanction them in the adequate manner.

“If the SPVM and the city won’t hear us in court, then they will hear us in the streets,” said Marc Lamarée, a protester who is currently facing charges in two trials after he was arrested at the Victoriaville riot last May, and at another student protest during the summer. “The SPVM has treated us like troublemakers since the beginning of the movement and I was even told they had a list of protesters to pay special attention to, which I am on. We should be able to defend ourselves legally against such profiling and excesses and this dismissal of complaints is bad news.”

Saturday’s protest was declared illegal by the police before it began due to the organizers failing to provide a march route. The demonstration was still authorized providing it remained peaceful.

The protesters, many of them masked and dressed in black, left Place Émilie-Gamelin at 8:45 p.m. closely flanked by officers and followed by mounted police. They walked through the streets of downtown Montreal, improvising their route and often walking against traffic. Aside from a few busted traffic cones and firecrackers, the protesters carried the march until it ended at its starting point around 11 p.m. with a single individual receiving a ticket.

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