Canada: City Without Cops

Montrealers discovered last week what it is like to live in a city without police and firemen. The lesson was costly: six banks were robbed, more than 100 shops were looted, and there were twelve fires. Property damage came close to $3,000,000; at least 40 carloads of glass will be needed to replace shattered storefronts. Two men were shot dead. At that, Montreal was probably lucky to escape as lightly as it did.

The immediate cause of the outburst was a strike for more pay staged by the city’s cops and firemen. There were far deeper causes as well. The happy glow cast by Expo 67 has faded. Separatists advocating an independent Quebee have ignited a series of violent demonstrations and bomb explosions. A continuing fiscal crisis—caused in part by the heavy expense of keeping a section of Expo open—has alienated Montrealers from their political leaders. The city’s police were particularly angry because their Toronto counterparts receive more pay for less dangerous work. When the city offered the police an increase that still left them $800 short of Toronto’s basic $9,200-a-year scale, the cops struck. As an Ottawa official put it: “The people who had been kicking them and stoning them and bashing them over the head weren’t paying them enough for it.”

Off the Beat. One morning last week, the 8 a.m. police shift went off to the Paul Sauvé Arena to argue strike tactics instead of reporting to their beats. Suddenly the city was left unguarded. By 11:20 a.m., the first bank robbery had occurred. By noon shops began to close, and banks shut their doors to all except old customers. Early in the evening, a group of taxi drivers added to the confusion. Protesting the fact that they are prohibited from serving Montreal’s airport, they led a crowd of several hundred to storm the garage of the Murray Hill Limousine Service Ltd., which has the lucrative franchise. Buses were overturned and set ablaze. From nearby rooftops, snipers’ shots rang out. A handful of frightened Quebec provincial police, called in to help maintain order, stood by helplessly. One was shot in the back by a sniper and died.

The crowd, augmented by other opportunists, moved through downtown Montreal, burning and looting. Rioters stormed into the swanky Queen Elizabeth Hotel, then moved on to the nearby Windsor Hotel and nearly wrecked Mayor Jean Drapeau’s newly opened restaurant. Expensive shops along St. Catherine’s Street were hit by looters. On the city’s outskirts, burglars went to work; one was shot dead by a doctor in his suburban home.

Running Amok. Belatedly, the Quebec provincial government called out 600 infantrymen and 300 Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It also rammed through an emergency law ordering police and firemen back to duty by midnight under threat of heavy penalties, including fines of up to $100 a day per striker. Soon after midnight, the cops began reappearing, made more than 60 arrests.

To Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, the trouble in Montreal was “part of a total society which is running amok . . . I am not saying the upsurge of violence is a Montreal phenomenon. It is a modern-day phenomenon.” On Montreal’s Black Tuesday, however, it was a relatively small band of thugs, militant students and separatists that caused most of the damage. Only when the looting began did other, less committed opportunists join in. Ordinary citizens amused themselves chiefly by running red lights—but nothing more.