ACLU questions police response

From Michael A. Fuoco:

Vic Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, said there were no legal observers in Oakland on Friday night as there were throughout the other demonstrations. But from what he has been hearing from people who were on the Pitt campus that night, there seemed to be no reason for police to have responded the way they did.

He said those arrested complained that while they tried to disperse, they kept running into other police units and were, in essence, trapped until they were arrested.

"Our help line has many, many messages on it. We're in the process of getting statements from people."
"It was a demonstation that could have been managed by far fewer police officers. The key is it should have been managed and not suppressed," he said. "The problem were not because they were being disorderly but because police tried to force them out of [Schenley Plaza].

"Short of the city saying they were not allowed to be in there, what were they doing wrong? So many police officers performed commendably throughout this, you wonder if they were frustrated, tired, stressed and the command staff made bad decisions to go after one last chance to arrest a lot of people."

Mr. Walczak said "the whole thing is curious" about how police reacted over the last few days.
"The criticism is more to deployment decisions than to individual officers, who I think most of whom behaved in a restrained manner," he said. "The reason it's bizarre is it seemed to focus almost exclusively on peaceful demonstrators.

"There was a pattern of intimidation and many questionable orders given to disperse and declaring demonstrations to be unlawful."

For example, he questioned the substantiation for the orders to disperse that led to arrests Thursday and Friday.

"Look at who got locked up, a bunch of Pitt students and few journalists, people who weren't even part of any demonstration. It raises real concerns, why were they ordering people to leave area live anyway?"
"Police can't indiscriminately arrest people. On [Friday] night they didn't even have the excuse of property damage going on or any illegal actitity. It's really inexplicable."

There was property damage, primarily windows of businesses, in Oakland Thursday night which, while not justifying police actions Friday, was a major difference between the two nights, he said. Still, he said, most of the arrests and "intimidation" took polace after the man police identifying as doing most of the vandalism was captured.

"It's hard to said the crimes justify the arrest of a lot of innocent people caught up in the situation. But you don't even have that [Friday]. I don't know how the cops can justify that."

As for Thursday's damage, he said it could have been prevented or greatly lessened had police commanders deployed their troops better.He said that as G-20 leaders met at Phipps Conservatory, police positioned between 900 to 1,000 officer at Schenley Plaza where a group of about 300 to 400 mostly curiosity seekers and some demonstrators had gathered.

However, he said when 150 "kids in mask and dark clothes," a group of anarchists, descended upon Oakland as advertised for a so-called "bash back" demonstration at 10 p.m., only two vans of police responded, according to ACLU legal observers.

"Within five minutes they were racing around Oakland throwing rocks through windows. Here you have a group that even we could tell is the one that is the cause of the problem but instead you have 900 cops in riot gear elsewhere. They started the crime spree and, to be clear, breaking windows is not constitutionally protected even if accompanied by a political message.

"That's when all the kids came out--a bunch of Pitt students out for Thursday night partying."