Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire

This is really starting to piss me off.

The SQ issued a statement yesterday regarding the undercover officers they planted at the Montebello protest. When attempting to explain how the officers got outed and why one of them had a rock in his hand, they said:

"They therefore joined a group of demonstrators that contained extremist elements. Those elements identified our police officers, who could not pursue their mandate. It was when leaving that group that they found themselves in a group of peaceful demonstrators. They then asked the police officers assigned to crowd control to leave the premises."

Maybe it’s just me , but this sounds like they are claiming that these guys were in amongst the ‘extremists’, turned around, and were immediately confronted by ‘peaceful demonstrators’.

Let me give you a brief geography lesson.

The ‘front line’ of this demonstration was right up at the gates of the Chateau Montebello. This is where the vast bulk of police were. This is where the pepper spray and tear gas incidents occurred. This is where I saw the occasional water bottle and piece of fruit sail overhead.



Behind us - and I’m talking a good city block, about 500 ft according to the map - was where the incident in the YouTube video took place. This was on the far side of the cemetery, on a little side street where the police had set up a line for some unknown reason. I have footage from earlier in the afternoon of David Cole and Maude Barlow standing there hanging out with some protesters who were sitting in front of the cops (not included in the edit I posted earlier, unfortunately).

Unless something untoward happened after I left, the only place where ‘extremists’ are likely to have been would be near the front gates. There was absolutely nothing going on where the SQ agents were finally confronted - meaning that, at the very least, the guy with the rock had more than enough time to drop the thing. And unless they were followed all the way to the back end of the protest, there is no way the ‘peaceful protesters’ would have had any idea what had happened with the ‘extremists’.

I call ‘bullshit’.

From what I saw, at least one out of every five people there had either a still camera or a camcorder (I had both). Someone has to have footage of these guys before they got outed on YouTube. I’ll keep checking mine.

UPDATE: Paul Malouf spotted these guys just before they met up with Mr. Cole, and guess what? According to him, the agents were east of the side street and walking west towards the front gates when they were first outed and decided to veer off.

If this is true (and it hasn't been verified yet), it means that the whole story about the agent being handed a rock and asked to throw it really is utter bullshit. There simply wasn't anybody to throw rocks at that far back.

(H/T to Gazetteer)