Montreal’s Ridiculous Police Pants Are Dead, Long Live Montreal’s Ridiculous Police Pants

Officers of the law who have spent the last three years patrolling Montreal streets clad in a bright rainbow of camouflage pants could soon be folding their protest garments. After a long strike over contracts and cuts to pension plans, the police union and the City of Montreal finally reached an agreement of principle last night, putting an end to tensions and a kibosh on terrible fashion crimes.

"It's a good deal for both sides, a negotiated deal, a win-win deal," police union president Yves Francoeur said in a statement.

Across the province, city employees and first responders affected by municipal cuts have been manifesting their discontent through a bevy of pressure tactics. This included plastering emergency vehicles with hundreds of hideous and low-quality stickers, because nothing screams "law and order" quite like a vehicle that looks like it fell into the hands of a collage-happy kindergartener playing with paste and post-its.

There was also a series of protests, with one particularly memorable occasion that involved the trashing of city hall and led to the suspension of six firefighters.

But the highlight of this saga has really been the pants, those terrible, ill-fitting, eye-hemorrhaging pants that made all officers of the law look like either Randy River bros circa 1995 or an early days Scary Spice. Pants so horrible they actually managed to partially eclipse news coverage of the death of a revered politician and got at least one person out of a traffic ticket. Pants… that I will miss, tbh.

To commemorate this era, here are my top three favourite pants moment, in no particular order of preference:

Camo-clad taxi driver is accused of impersonating a police officer

At the height of Quebec's taxi vs. Uber feud, one hero decided to proclaim himself the "sheriff" of taxis, donning a red anti-Uber baseball cap and grey camo pants. In any other part of the world, the only thing you'd be accused of impersonating in that getup is a moose hunter, but in Montreal you got told you're posing as a cop.

Hassan Kattoua was also accused of trying to intimidate UberX drivers and reportedly threw eggs and flour at their cars.

Man avoids $1,293 fine because pink camo-clad woman didn't look like a police officer

This is from Laval, but stems from a similar protest: a man who received a hefty ticket for "endangering the life of a police officer" took his case to court on the basis that the officer didn't look like one. Marc-Olivier Caron, who was reportedly speeding, failed to stop when a woman—standing in the road wearing pink pants and a red hat—attempted to flag him down.

Officer Nathalie Dagenais, who had been conducting a radar operation, handed Caron a massive fine, so he brought her to court and successfully argued that he could not be charged with endangering a police officer because she was dressed like such a basic.

He won.

Police officers draw outrage for wearing dumb pants to state funeral

You'd think the funeral of a revered politician would be a good time to temporarily bury the hatchet and wear respectable attire, however…. in June 2015, Montreal police officers raised the ire of seemingly the entire province after they wore their dumb dumb pants to watch over the state funeral of former Quebec PM Jacques Parizeau. People were pissed.

They rectified the situation a few months later at the funeral of Céline Dion's husband René Angelil, at least.

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