C: Yeah, they videotaped kids throwing bottles and stuff a hundred yards away.
L: And they arrested, what, five, six kids…
C: It’s funny, you know, that was it, it was totally random, these plainclothes guys would just like grab someone, throw ‘em in the back of the car, they weren’t necessarily doing anything, they just happened to be… punk rockers. One guy was just picked out at random.
L: Was the first cop car on the scene that unmarked one?
C: Well…
L: I heard they pulled one of them back out of the car, and that’s when they started throwing perfume and all that…
C: I don’t know if they pulled someone back out. (Maybe the cops were out of the car and the person just came back out.) The first on the scene were just regular cops, blue and whites. After they threw that first kid in the car… someone threw one of those Montreal Mirror boxes on top of the cop car, and the cops got really mad about that. It dented the roof of the car, and like, that was when they sort of lost their composure. There were melées between kids and the plainclothes cops and stuff… See that’s the thing, you see, now, like… I’ve been pepper-sprayed, luckily that time they were still not… carrying it. They could’ve just done that. It might’ve been worse, it might’ve been better.
L: I dunno, that last riot (June ‘24 ‘98, see next issue), that’s practically what started it, so…
C: I got pepper-sprayed at Bifteck, at that incident… You know that thing where M—-’s dog was tied up on the fence there, and Eric was banned from Bifteck… The bartender called the cops (to get the dog off) and the cops showed up and roughed him up, as well as a girl (who took the dog off the leash) that had nothing to do with it. Then they were embarassed, ‘cause they thought it was his dog, but it was M—-’s dog. Then they said they would impound the dog for being off the leash. M— flipped out, jumped over the fence, & then nine cops beat the shit out of him. Me and C– and a bunch of other people who saw this got involved, and got pepper-sprayed. There was like 10 cop cars.
L: Cause you were just like…
C: Well, you know, I don’t even know the guy that well, but, it was like, ten cops on him, I mean, he wasn’t cooperating or anything, but still, ten cops were just beating the shit out of ‘im. And like, trying to drag him around the corner there onto Guilbault so no one can see. And we were like, oh man, if he gets out of sight… And like, just regular people were looking at the cops like, “What are you doing!”
L: You just feel like helping a fellow man, when you see shit like that…
C: And that’s when they started spraying. And fuck, that shit hurts man. (Makes painful faces.) I had a sore throat for weeks.

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