Quebec police officers undercover at the Montebello protest

A protest at the North American leaders summit in Montebello, Quebec took an unexpected turn when Quebec provincial police admitted that three of their officers had been undercover among the demonstrators. The officers had reportedly disguised themselves and blended into the crowd, but their presence became much harder to ignore after video of the incident appeared online.

In the footage, three plainclothes men can be seen wearing bandanas over their faces. One of them was carrying a rock, and people identified as protest organizers, who were wearing suits, confronted him and told him to put it down. They accused the three men of being "police instigators" and attempted to remove their disguises, but were unable to unmask them.

Once the video circulated, the incident became a much bigger controversy. Protesters and commentators questioned whether the officers were simply gathering intelligence or had been placed inside the demonstration to provoke violence. Police denied that they were acting as instigators, but the admission that undercover officers had been embedded in the crowd, combined with footage showing one carrying a rock, left both sides offering very different explanations of what had actually been happening inside the protest.