This is weird and possibly illegal. The police attitude continues to be “whatever it takes to support the 1%.” Salon:

“They wrote on my hand with a permanent marker and then after I felt something pointy and metallic scraping across my skin,” wrote protester Nina Haigh on Facebook, continuing: I immediately asked “What are you doing” and they simply said we wrote on you with a pen and showed me a bunch of various pens in her hand. I didn’t argue about it and I was unable to look at my hands as they were tied behind my back with zipties. As soon as I was released I looked at my hands and there was no ink on them from a pen. … This morning we tested my hands under a black light and sure enough there was a number 2! The freaky thing is this is IN my skin, washing my hands and scrubbing with abrasives will not get this off…. perhaps in several months of my skin cells renewing themselves if will eventually fade.

NOTE FROM JOHN: Okay, I’ll make the Nazi analogy. Since when is it okay for the government to tattoo the skin of its citizens, against their will, with numbers? No one in the Montreal government did a double take when the cops told them they’d be branding people with numbers scratched on their skin semi-permanently?

And I’m waiting for police to say “bouncers at bars use the same technique to keep trouble makers out.” Yes, and the Nazis also used the same technique. Also, I’m not entirely sure it isn’t battery for a bouncer to write on someone’s arm, but it most certainly isn’t appropriate for the government to be branding its citizens like cattle, or worse.

The OWS protesters should return with real numbers written on their arms with black markers, and flash their arms, en masse, to the media for a photo opp – I’d recommend using the real numbers used by the Nazis on their victims, and make sure you’re up on the full story of the original victim, so you can share it with the media. Perhaps this will educate the Montreal police about the wisdom of adopting tactics used by the Nazis.

UPDATE: Via Salon’s Justin Elliott we learn that the secret police ink may have a history of health risks.