Dumb Cops, Bad Cops. *Updated*

Canadian cops admit to posing as protesters, commit further lying douchebaggery. Unbelievable.

Boing Boing: Canadian cops admit staging own provocateurs at protest:

"Police in Quebec have admitted that the people in the YouTube video linked yesterday on BoingBoing were their officers. However, the press release says... "The police officers were located by the demonstrators when they refused to launch projectiles." Now that version of events is very clearly contradicted by the video, which shows demonstrators telling the officers to put the rock down, not to launch it."

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Cops dressed as "protesters", carrying rocks, prevented from inciting violence by the real protesters.

Protecting and serving. Just not the people.

Torontoist: Bon Cop, Bad Cop:

"Earlier this evening, The Star reported on what might somehow rank as one of the strangest videos on YouTube. Recorded on Monday afternoon at the protests in Montebello, the video shows the tail end of a confrontation between Dave Coles (president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada) and three masked men who seem hell-bent on riling up him, his fellow protestors ("old guys, grandmothers, grandfathers"), and the line of riot-ready police.



For a minute or so, it's just Coles being a good samaritan, trying to stop a potentially violent confrontation and demanding that one of the men who picks up a rock put it down. It's already extremely tense by the time that someone starts pointing at the masked protestors and chanting "policier!" Coles demands that the men take off their masks, and the majority of the crowd join him––some even reach for the bandannas themselves––and accuse the masked men of being cops, police provocateurs hired to start a riot. When Coles actually looks at one of the men dead-on and says, "you're a police officer," the masked men all freeze, seemingly dumb-struck. And then they kind of start being aggressive again, until a little over two minutes in, when there's the weirdest police takedown you'll probably ever see.



The video is a strange thing to watch: there's absolutely nothing beyond circumstantial evidence and hearsay to suggest that the masked men are cops, but the whole thing just feels so off. Notably, this is not the first report of provocateurs from the protests: The Harper Index has several other equally strange stories, while The Star's article mentions (among other tidbits of accusatios) matching "yellow triangles" on several alleged provocateurs' boots that match those on boots that police officers were wearing. (Those triangles, by the way, almost certainly denote Canadian Standards Association–approved footwear for "light industrial work environments"––because, really, if you intend to fight cops in riot gear, you're gonna want toe and puncture protection.)"