Public hearing told undercover officers wore masks at protests
SPVM will no longer apply bylaw banning face coverings, requiring protest itinerary
The SPVM will no longer have undercover police wearing masks at protests, they told the city ’s Public Safety Commission — just one of the revelations that came out at a historic public hearing Tuesday on the force’s tactics at demonstrations.
It was a rare admission by Pascal Richard, the police inspector in charge of operational planning, that the Montreal police had, in fact, used undercover officers posing as protesters in recent years, during and perhaps after the student protests of 2012.
Richard also told the commission — and the public — that the SPVM is no longer applying the P-6 bylaw, which made wearing a mask at protests illegal in itself and forced protesters to give police their planned itinerary or risk having the protest declared illegal.
Both of those provisions of P-6 were declared unconstitutional by a Superior Court judge in 2016, but Richard told the hearing that police were no longer applying any part of the bylaw.
“Our practices are constantly evolving to maintain the balance between peace and order and freedom of expression,” Richard told the committee. “Since 2015, we have not been declaring protests to be illegal. So we will stop a protest if it degenerates, but we treat each protest individually to make it as safe as possible.”
The hearing was the ninth Public Safety Committee hearing to be held in public since Projet Montréal came to power promising a more transparent city administration.
For Alex Norris, the president of the commission, the revelations were proof of success.
But members of the public, who had gathered for the rare opportunity to ask police brass pointed questions, were not necessarily convinced the police had entirely turned the page.
Dominique Peschard, of the Ligue des droits et libertés, confronted Richard about the practice of “political profiling ” — targeting some protests for repression but not others, depending on the cause at hand — and encircling protesters, detaining them all and issuing tickets, only to have 83 per cent of them later acquitted or having the charges against them dropped.
The practice was particularly common during demonstrations to protest against tuition hikes in 2012, which saw hundreds of student demonstrators “kettled.”
Richard responded that the police have refrained in the last two years from mass arrests.
“I can’t say we won’t do it again, but it’s a last resort,” Richard said, adding they treat all groups equally. “We prefer to make targeted arrests.”
The police also fielded numerous questions about whether it would stop using tactics to intimidate protesters and deter them from participating again.
Claude Prévost, who uses a wheelchair, made a passionate plea for police to stop using pepper spray and sound grenades at protests, which can particularly affect people with respiratory illnesses and auditory handicaps. Those who are in wheelchairs or using canes may also be injured, or injure others, when police charge into a crowd to disperse them.
“When police charge into a protest, it happens very quickly. We haven’t necessarily heard the order to disperse. We don’t know what’s happening, but we see people running away,” Prévost said. Handicapped people should not have to avoid protests out of fear of these tactics, he said.
Richard said his own daughter is handicapped and admitted it is a particular challenge to police when there are handicapped people present in a situation where they decide they need to use force. But they warn people that they will use tear gas or other tools to give them time to get out.
Francis Grenier, who lost an eye when police exploded a sound grenade to disperse a protest in 2012, questioned police about their reporting on the issue and refusal to take responsibility.
But as numerous student protests in 2012 have given way to regular protests over so-called “illegal” immigration in the last year, several speakers asked how police will deal with the repetitive and sometimes violent confrontations between far-right groups and anti-fascists.
La Meute, for one, is planning a protest July 1.
Alexandre Popovic, of the Coalition Against Repression and Police Abuse, asked what the police commanders were doing to make sure police at such protests were not in fact aligned with the far-right and even members of the far-right groups themselves.
Richard said such protests and counter-protests present a particular challenge to police who must protect the right by both sides to protest. They don’t take sides, he said.