Coutts Alberta residents question police narrative

On Feb. 14, 2022, the RCMP arrested 14 Freedom Convoy protesters in Coutts, AB, charging 4 with conspiracy to murder police - which the Trudeau government used to justify invoking the Emergencies Act that day. But some who know the men aren't buying the official narrative.

‘Somebody Planted the Guns’: In Canada, a Raided, Distrusting Village Blames the Police | New York Times - Catherine Porter:

September 24, 2022 - ""So pervasive is the belief here that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a dictator-in-the-making that ... many residents of the village, Coutts, Alberta, think the biggest event that occurred here in recent memory — when the police raided a local home in February and revealed a frightening cache of weapons — was a hoax perpetrated by the police to silence an antigovernment protest.... 'It may have been a conspiracy,' said Bill Emerson, who for four decades has lived across the street from the home the police raided....

"The police raid came during the time of Canada’s Freedom Convoy, which began as a movement by truckers to challenge a government vaccination mandate but spread to include a wide array of antigovernment grievances. The stark contrast between the mainstream account of what happened — the police disarming a small group of protesters with violent intentions — and the conspiracy-fueled one — a government attempt to demonize the protesters — reflects a burgeoning polarization of Canadian society....

"The Freedom Convoy movement — that aimed at one point to replace the federal government with a ruling committee including protesters, [not true - gd] and which Mr. Trudeau dismissed as a 'fringe minority' with 'unacceptable views' — is hardly a fringe. Months later, it garners the support of one in four Canadians, according to a recent poll, and some of its beliefs have entered mainstream politics. 'We have crossed a Rubicon, and there ain’t no going back,' said Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. 'Canada hasn’t faced something like this, especially not in a long time. How do we deal with a movement that wants to dismantle democracy?'

Coutts, Alberta (upper) and Sweet Grass, Montana. Aerial photo by Joe Mabel, 2013. CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons

"Coutts is a small border village 185 miles southeast of Calgary.... Before last winter, the village’s faint claim to fame was a mention by President Obama of its baseball fields, which nose right up against the international border.... Then, one frigid day last winter, hundreds of tractor-trailers and trucks rumbled down the highway to the village’s edge and stopped, blocking all lanes leading to the normally busy border crossing. They were a splinter group of the Freedom Convoy.... In Coutts, the village’s only bar, shuttered by the pandemic [restrictions - gd], was reopened to be their headquarters.

"All the while, scores of provincial police, members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, kept watch. Over 17 days, 552 officers were assigned to the village of just 224, according to the mayor. On the fourteenth evening of protest, when a local church was holding a Sunday service in the bar, the police arrived in full military gear, wielding automatic weapons, and arrested two men in the crowd. Later that night, they executed a search warrant on a house, where a local woman was hosting many protesters. Over a few hours, the police arrested 14 people. Most were charged with mischief over 5,000 Canadian dollars, or about $3,700, and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose. But four men face a far more serious charge — conspiracy to commit murder, which carries a potential life-in-prison sentence.

"Undercover officers witnessed the set up of what they believed to be a delivery of guns to Coutts, search warrants reveal.... A photo of the cache of weapons [police] seized included rifles, handguns, high capacity magazines, ammunition and bullet proof vests. All four of the men charged with conspiracy to commit murder are middle-aged, blue collar workers from Southern Alberta. A day before the police raid, one of them, Jerry Morin, recorded a video on Facebook, calling his friends to Coutts to help 'hold the line.' 'There’s no excuses,' said Mr. Morin, a 40-year-old who installs and repairs electrical lines. 'This is war'....

"The day of the raid, [the Trudeau] government passed a sweeping emergency bill, granting police wide powers to arrest protesters, and instructing banks to freeze accounts linked to the convoy. Federal Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino pointed to Coutts as part of the justification.... 

"Marco Van Huigenbos, the main leader of the Coutts protest, is so convinced that at least two of the four men are not guilty, he is subsidizing their families with 10,000 Canadian dollars a month. The money is from leftover funds raised in Coutts.... 'They are using these guys to send a message,' said Mr. Huigenbos, a town councilor and business owner from nearby Fort Macleod, who himself was recently charged with mischief over 5,000 Canadian dollars. 'There is political influence here.'"

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/24/world/canada/freedom-convoy-coutts-alberta.html