Tuesday March 15th, 2011, in Montreal the annual protest against police brutality was held. I was not there but I have read several articles about what happened, watched several TV news reports, watched several YouTube videos (from this year and previous years), and heard a partial account from my brother in law who was there.
In the newspapers and on the TV news reports they said that about 258 people were arrested, that they played the "usual cat and mouse game" (cyberpresse.ca), that a few people within the 500 people there where causing trouble and the rest were not causing any problems. In the YouTube videos I could see that everything was calm in some of the videos and in others the police where arresting some people, which in most cases refused to be arrested. It was also reported that a bystander was hit in the face with a thrown bottle. From what I heard through my brother in law was that even some bystanders were arrested for no reason and at least one person was beaten for "not reacting fast enough."
In my head having a rally against police brutality that is going to be surveyed by that same police is a time bomb, it just takes one person, on either side, to make the situation get out of hand. Furthermore if you look at the videos from previous years you can see people throwing things at the police, yelling "fuck the police", destroying public property (mailboxes and trashcans mostly) and in some cases throwing snow and other stuff at the police and you see the police arresting people, pushing them away and in some cases with more force than needed and sometimes with way more force than needed, but there are some cases that they reacted how I would expect.
If you are trying to protest to someone "peacefully" you don't yell "fuck you," to me, that's when it stops being a peaceful demonstration, if you are insulting then you are already being verbally aggressive, in other words violent. If to this, you add the throwing of rocks and paintballs at police and at public and private property then it doesn't surprise me that the police started arresting people. I know that the rocks and paintballs are isolated events, and it does not represent most of the people there, but it only takes one person and one thrown rock (or paintball) to defeat the purpose of the "peaceful protest."
The moment the first window was broken is reason enough to stop the protest and start arresting people, the thing is that the police do not know how many people are going to follow the lead of the person who threw the first rock, and from what I saw from previous years it could easily and rapidly get out of hand. If the people are really there to make a public peaceful stand against police brutality and are there because they do not agree with violence, then to me, it would be a stronger statement, that, when that first rock was thrown, for them to disperse and finish the protest, it would make more sense to say "we do not endorse ANY kind of violence" than to continue and wait and see how the police react. I feel that to some extent, the people there want to prove their point, so if the police arrest some people and are more violent than they should then it's a won battle for the protesters who could then say "look at the police being violent, that is why we did this in the first place."
I don't agree that police should profile people, arrest them without cause, intimidate with violence, abuse their power, use excess force, but if you are on the street yelling "fuck the police" to their face and you know that some of the people who are with you are not going to be peaceful, then I think it's very naive to think that there are not going to be reactions from the other side and to act surprised when it does happen. I am not trying to say that people should not protest against police brutality and violence, but at least be consistent with what you say and what you do.
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