Activists discover undercover police disguised as protestors deliberately trying to instigate unethical arrests at SPP Montebello Summit

by Peter Garden, Turning the Tide Bookstore

This is an interesting and important story developing around what looks like the use of undercover police to disrupt and discredit the anti-SPP protests in Montebello, Quebec.

David Coles, head of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union in a video filmed by Paul Manly that has been circulated confronts three men that he accuses of being police (agents provocateurs) and asks them to leave. Eventually after a confrontation, the three men are grabbed by riot police and the men are apparently arrested.

Notably, the masked men never contacted the activists' legal team to access support for their arrests and the police have no record of the three men ever being taken into custody. There are also other pieces of evidence to support the allegations that these three men were police.

Immediately, what follows is my own personal account of encounters with undercover police and agents provocateurs at the G8 protests in Calgary 5 years ago.

The most apparent presence of undercover police dressed as militant protestors or black bloc I have ever witnessed happened at the G8 protests in Calgary in 2002. The police had at least one undercover officer in the inner circle of the G8 protest organizing committee. These undercover officers were in place months ahead of time.

There was a particular organizer who I know to have been an undercover who led a number of the meetings that I attended who dressed like a punk rocker/anarchist (black army boots, patches, punk t-shirts, etc.). I know that he was a police officer because a group of friends of mind from Edmonton who had organized with this individual, saw him in a coffee shop a number of months later in his police uniform, drinking coffee with some fellow officers.

Herein is what I know about how this individual and other police officers disrupted the G8 protests in Calgary, within the organizing context of the overall protests.

The organizing meetings for the G8 protests included a number of different groups representing different interests including members of the trade union movement (some members of the Canadian Labour Congress, Alberta Federation of Labour and other union members), the Council of Canadians, as well as environmental groups, Aboriginal activists and many individuals who were concerned about the G8.

The protests were organized so that all in attendance at the large organizing meetings (usually around 100-200 people) had a say about what kind of protests would happen and the tactics used during the protests (a document was created called a basis of unity).

Any logistics regarding parade routes and the nuts and bolts of how the protests would proceed were handled by a small group of Alberta-based organizers entrusted with figuring out the best and most effective routes to take for our protest march. The undercover officer in question was a member of this small organizing group.

The night before the biggest march through Calgary, the undercover led a meeting and once the people in attendance had decided upon the messaging and the intention of the march, the floor was opened up to questions.

One woman asked a question of the small group determining the parade route. She requested information as to the level of risk of arrest for those participating in the march the next morning. I remember the undercover officer telling her that if she was scared of being arrested that she should stay home. I remember a gasp from the crowd at the disrespectful answer to her question. In hindsight, the message was clear to me - if you weren't hardcore and willing get arrested, you should stay home.

The march proceeded the next morning with members of small logistical coordinating committee placed both within the march and on bicycles which rode ahead and scouted out police positions to radio back to the those within the march.

The march had no firmly planned route but was meant to go through Calgary's business district and send the message to the business community that we were there to counter their agenda. A rough route had apparently been agreed upon by this committee and the bicycle scouts were to determine the best streets to take.

Unfortunately, the undercover officer was placed in charge of leading the march itself and was apparently taking orders from the police instead of the bicycle scouts. He took the march in a different direction which barely made it through the Calgary business district and caused very few traffic issues for Calgary commuters.

I later learned from friends who helped organize the march, that he apparently took the march in opposite directions of what the bike scouts were suggesting, rendering our march virtually without impact on the people to whom we were trying to get our message across.

During the march a friend of mine from Saskatoon was approached by a masked protester dressed in black who tried to convince him to go into the Red Zone (code for the area where confrontations with the police were most likely) and "fuck shit up" with him.

My friend sensed that there was something different about the protestor and asked him politely if he was a police officer.

The man reacted quite violently and verbally berated my friend for having the gall to accuse him of being a cop. After strongly denying the accusation the man shortly left the scene.

I noticed several other undercover police at the march. I had been to several protests in my life before this one in Calgary and was comfortable enough in the marches that I would notice details that someone who was absorbed in the energy and momentum of the march would not.

I started to look around and was able to pick out at least a half dozen undercover officers, all dressed as militant protestors. I watched as these masked men would appear and disappear behind bunches of trees, hills and corners.

Many wore sunglasses to hide their eyes. No incidents of provocation happened like the one in Montebello but the story my friend recounted to me indicates that the police had a plan of trying to create a violent incident if they could.

I know first hand that police use these violent incidents as an excuse to descend upon a protest and arrest anyone they can get their hands on.

In Montreal in the summer of 2003 at a WTO Finance Ministers meeting, I and over 250 other people were arrested and spent over 36 hours in jail because a handful of people in the march smashed some windows. I don't believe that this incident was caused by the police but they certainly used the opportunity to repress the right to protest of the entire group.

All of the charges against myself and this group of people were dropped after two and a half years of the prosecution stalling and drawing our cases out in the court.

We are now in the process of moving forward with a class action law suit against the Montreal Police for violating our charter rights to freedom of expression.

For me the Montebello story is not a surprise. I have seen police use these and all sorts of illegal and dirty tactics to break up protests.

I am glad that this was caught on tape as it is a clear example that the police are not in the business of keeping the peace but instead of serving the interests of those in power to repress dissent.

I have seen time and time again that they are not interested in just nabbing the "bad apples" within these protests (which would not be particularly difficult) but instead of instigating violent incidents or using violent incidents to repress and discredit movements with legitimate analyses and critiques of the state of the world.

I hope that this gets some serious press coverage as the Canadian public needs to see what our government and their lackeys in the police apparatuses are up to. If these incidents are ignored and just talked about within activist circles, no pressure will ever be put on the police to obey the law and they will only expand the use of these tactics.

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