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Hey guys, I’m coming off like a 10 hour work day or something so this is going to be a total shitpost.

However, it’s going to be a shitpost about Montreal. So there’s that going for it.

So, a couple of weeks ago I was sitting with Sophie and her mom and a man from France. This is a thing, it happened.

The topic of the Montreal Police (STM) came up and why exactly they went around in red baseball caps and (usually) camo pants. I explained, in short, that it was due to the government slashing into their pensions.

Now, it doesn’t really matter whether you’re pro or anti this pension based politicking. At the end of the day, the reality that we have lived with for the past year and a half is that our cops don’t really look like any other cops on the planet. The pension plan bill was passed December 4, 2014 and shortly after we started to see red hats and stickers all over our police force.

During that conversation with that man from France I even had to pause for a moment. What the hell did Montreal look like anyways? They had a light blue shirt and a navy vest, right? Sometimes a hat? Probably.

I looked it up, and I was wrong.

They actually switched away from the light blue shirt some time in 2013 to an all dark blue uniform. I probably don’t remember it because they’ve been wearing their ballcaps and camo pants for much longer than they wore that new uniform.

Can I just say that the all-dark navy blue uniform really makes me think of metro cops? Not a good look STM.

So now our cops just sort of look like that. There’s been some controversy when famous people die and their funerals have a police presence. Sometimes the cops “show respect” by wearing their actual uniforms, and other times they take advantage of the exposure to wear their protest gear.

Jean Beliveau and Jacques Perizeau died during this protest. One of them had the cops dressing in their normal clothes and the other didn’t. (Hint: The cops respect hockey a hell of a lot more than a politician).

All that to say that at this point, I’m pretty sure that everyone living in Montreal and surrounding areas (the pension cut applies to all police working in Quebec) now knows what a protesting cop looks like.

Everyone apparently except for some guy named Marc-Olivier Caron.

So Marc-Olivier was doing 70 km/h in a 50 zone. A police officer tried to wave him down, going as far as to step *into the street* and Marc-Olivier just swerved around her and kept going.

She finally got him to pull over and slapped him with a speeding ticket and a $1300 fine for endangering an officer. This guy protested the additional fine and took it to court. A judge said there was reasonable doubt that Marc-Olivier didn’t recognize that the woman, in camo pants and a bright yellow vest that said “POLICE” on it (and likely a red cap), was a police officer.

Where the hell have you been living for the past 18 months man? That’s just what cops look like now. If and when they go back to their old (new) uniforms it’s going to be even harder to find them since they won’t have easy to spot red baseball caps anymore.

At the end of the day, we know what our cops look like and if you don’t, you’re being a dummy.

All of this might come to an end very shortly, and recently the branch of law enforcement that operates within our courthouses have started wearing their actual uniforms again as a sign of good faith and willingness to return to the negotiation table.

I kind of hope it never ends. I like our camo pants/baseball cap cops. Look at these cops from other cities, BORING:

Also holy crap those London police officers have some seriously terrifying looking guns.

Keith does all sorts of things here on 9to5.cc, he works with the other founders on 9to5 (illustrated), co-hosts our two podcasts: The 9to5 Entertainment System and Go Plug Yourself and blogs here as The Perspicacious Geek.