HAMILTON, Ont. - Police were confronted with hundreds of aboriginal protesters armed with sledgehammers, axes, bats and even a chainsaw when a land claim demonstration erupted into chaos in the southern Ontario community of Caledonia, court heard Friday.

The alarming details of the events of April 20, 2006 -- when a police raid on an aboriginal-occupied housing development set off a chain of events that saw road and railway lines blockaded and a bridge burned to the ground -- came as evidence in a $7-million lawsuit launched against Ontario and its provincial police force.

Six Nations members have been occupying the site in Caledonia, Ont., since February 2006. Dave Brown and Dana Chatwell, whose home borders the property, allege the police failed to protect them from repeated threats, intimidation and harassment from the protesters.

Court heard evidence Friday from Gwen Boniface, the Ontario Provincial Police commissioner at the time, that police were aware of criminal activity directed at Brown and Chatwell by the protesters and that in some cases police did not take action.

In the Crown's opening statement, heard Friday morning, it stressed the need for negotiation and communication as an approach to dealing with aboriginal land claims. Lawyer David Feliciant made numerous references to a report on the events in 1995 at Ipperwash Provincial Park, where native protester Dudley George was shot and killed by a police sniper.

"The OPP and the province of Ontario attempted to manage this situation (in Caledonia) through negotiation, with every effort made to preserve the safety of the public, which included the safety of the protesters, the residents of Caledonia and the police officers involved," Feliciant said.

However, evidence from Boniface and another senior police official was that police did not intervene in several instances of criminal activity that were not related to the land claim.

Protesters began occupying the site in late February 2006 and in March a court ordered they be removed from the property. Police decided to act on the order on April 20, 2006, when 180 officers descended on the site at 4 a.m.

They had successfully removed most of the people there a few hours later, when hundreds more protesters and supporters began streaming back to the site, court heard in evidence from Insp. Brian Haggith. Haggith and Boniface's evidence came in the form of excerpts from interviews done under oath -- called "read-in" evidence.

Police were simply overcome by the hordes of protesters and were forced to retreat. People were streaming onto the site with "every kind of weapon imaginable" other than firearms from what he could see, Haggith said, including sledgehammers, axes, bats and a chainsaw.

After the failed raid, the protesters erected barricades blocking the town's two main roads -- blockades that would stay up for about five weeks. Brown and Chatwell's home was inside the barricade and the aboriginals subjected them to arbitrary denials of passage, sudden curfews, vehicle searches and instances of stealing their groceries, court heard.

The actions surrounding the blockades were "all unlawful," Haggith said.

"It blockaded the road," he said. "They set up a checkpoint ... like a customs."

"I know we asked them if they would kindly remove the barricades," Haggith said in the interview. "They said no."

Haggith said the illegal barricades were not considered to be part of any aboriginal land claim protest.

Also on April 20, the protesters set fire to a wooden bridge not on the housing development site and when the fire department arrived, protesters shouted death threats at the firefighters. The fire chief said police stood by and did nothing, so he ordered his firefighters to let the bridge burn, because he wasn't sure police could ensure their safety.

"He just didn't believe that police would stop it," Haggith said.

Haggith's interview touched on several other incidents in which he described aboriginals committing crimes in actions unrelated to the land claim, and police not taking action.

On one day in June 2006, protesters swarmed an elderly couple's car and the man had a heart attack. The same day, court heard, protesters attacked a TV cameraman trying to film the incident and took his camera, and an officer driving on a nearby public road was forced out of his car, which protesters then drove at him as he lay injured on the ground.

Haggith said he went to his superiors, saying these were acts of aggression that had nothing to do with the protesters exercising a land claim right.

"Arrests should have been made and they weren't (right away)," Haggith told his bosses.

The Crown acknowledges harm has come to Brown and Chatwell as a result of the occupation, but that doesn't mean the province and police force are liable, Feliciant said. He suggested Brown and Chatwell shoulder some of the blame for the ongoing tensions between them and the protesters.

"From time to time Mr. Brown and Ms. Chatwell engaged in behaviour that provoked the protesters on the site and exacerbated an already difficult situation," he said, adding the Crown plans to challenge some of the couple's psychologists' findings. Court heard Thursday the stress has caused them depression, anxiety and that Brown now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

The question is not whether Brown and Chatwell suffered harm because of the protesters, but whether the Crown is at fault, Feliciant said.