1968 Chicago riot cops set to ‘celebrate’ mass beatings

[G_j]

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/18/chicago-riot-cops/

1968 Chicago riot cops set to ‘celebrate’ mass beatings
By Muriel Kane

Published: June 18, 2009


Members of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) who participated in what an official report later described as a “police riot” during the 1968 Democratic National Convention are planning to get together next week to reminisce about the good times and set the record straight on “what really happened.”

FOP president Mark Donahue insists, “It’s just a get-together for guys who worked together 40 years ago. Nothing more.” However, the group’s own statements indicate that the reunion is intended as a political statement.

As the official Chicago Riot Cops website explains, “The time has come that the Chicago Police be honored and recognized for their contributions to maintaining law and order - and for taking a stand against Anarchy. The time was the hot summer month of August ‘68. The Democratic National Convention was about to start and the only thing that stood between Marxist street thugs and public order was a thin blue line of dedicated, tough Chicago police officers.”

The site offers information for those wishing to attend the reunion, along with a nostalgia-laden photo section featuring baton-wielding police officers cracking the skulls of demonstrators.

Chicago Copwatch, which tracks current police brutality, is organizing a rally and a march to the Fraternal Order of Police Hall on the night of the reunion. The group has issued a statement linking the events of the 1960s to present abuses:


<snip>


As Time magazine reported in an article summarizing the report, the roots of the violence went back to the previous April, when then-Mayor Richard Daley had criticized the police for what he considered excessive restraint in dealing with the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King. When Daley and his aides took at face value the “diabolical threats” issued by the ragtag group of socialists, anarchists, pacifists, and pranksters who showed up to demonstrate at the Democratic National Convention, the stage was set for massive police overreaction.

The anxious and overworked police lashed out indiscriminately, and according to Time, “Witnesses frequently noted that if a demonstrator being chased by police got away, the cops would simply club whoever else was handy.” Despite the police violence, no disciplinary actions in response to “these violators of sound police procedures and common decency” had been carried out prior to the completion of the report.

[grannie4peace]

1. pretty soon we'll be like iran!

[Joanne98]

2. Now they live in a violent city all the time. Karma's a bitch.

[chicago legal pro]

10. Most of them don't live here anymore

They have retired and moved to the suburbs or Florida or Arizona.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. Day One what really happened, personal observations.

In the midst of a peaceful if illegal (no permit) demonstration the Chicago Police attacked a demonstrator who's crime appeared to be 'sitting on a statue of a guy on a horse', pulling him forcefully down off the statue such that he fell on his arm, fracturing it and requiring hospitalization.

Later that evening at another no permit peaceful march the police attacked us with clubs. A man next to me was struck full force in the head with a riot club. He was wearing a motorcycle helmet. The helmet split in two from the force of the blow. I've never seen anyone struck that hard in the head with a club before and I hope to never see such a thing again.

Finally, in the park that night, at least three times, the police saw fit to drive patrol cars at fairly high speed into the assembled crowd in an attempt to disperse the protesters, most of whom were camping in the park and thus had no particular place to disperse to.

That was day one. It all went rapidly downhill from there.

[Dogmudgeon]

4. "The policeman is not there to create disorder ...

... the policeman is there to preserve disorder."

-- Hon. Richard J. Mayor Daley, 1968.

--d!

[Journeyman]

5. The movie "Medium Cool" was filmed on the streets of Chicago during the Convention. . .

and did a remarkable job of showing the police riot in all its fury. Definitely worth seeking out, both as a documentary of the times and commentary on the era -- a disturbing, powerful piece of cinema verite. It was begun as a fictional story but found itself (as it was filmed) caught in the very real events surrounding the 1968 Democratic Convention. Well worth seeking out.


http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/32056/Medium-Cool/overview

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_Cool

[G_j]

7. good heads up

I forgot about that movie.


maybe we should all try to make it to the copwatch counter-rally.

[Xipe Totec]

6. Ahh, good times...

:sarcasm:

[DailyGrind51]

8. Hugh Hefner got beat up just for walking out of his mansion to see what was happening!

Dan Rather got muscled on the floor of the convention center.

[WI_DEM]

9. maybe the old hippies/peace niks of Chicago '68 can have a counter reunion across the street?

maybe it would end up as a riot on the streets.

[norepubsin08]

11. Excellent!