Protesters: Police pepper-sprayed 'peaceful' gathering

Source: Rocky Mountain News

DOWNTOWN -- Protesters who clashed with police tonight near Civic Center Park say they were sprayed with pepper spray and shot with rubber bullets.



The protesters, 100 or more who range in age from their teens to their 50s, have been cordoned into an area of 15th Street between Cleveland and Court places by dozens of police in riot gear. The standoff started in the park and then quickly moved, said Brandon Brown, a volunteer medic from Seattle, Wash. Brown was carrying a bottle of water and offering it to the journalists and protesters who had been sprayed by officers. Many coughed from peppery haze near the steps of the Wellington Webb Municipal Building. When the crowd reached 15th, the officers formed a wall with their bodies.

The protest, which began about 7 p.m. in Civic Center Park, was an unpermitted event designed to "Disrupt the DNC," as a series of anarchist protests organized by Unconventional Denver have been labeled. According to literature reviewed by the Rocky Mountain News, attendees were told to "come ready for quick, decentralized actions spanning the downtown area at a variety of risk levels."

Almost immediately, said protester Magi Belknap, 21, police fired pepper spray at the protesters, causing them to flee across the park and onto 15th Street, where numerous officers blocked them into a pair of parking garages. "The police started hitting people," Belknap said. "We only walked for like a block" before the confrontation, she said. Protester Honey Traiman, 55, said the police action was unprovoked. "It was a very peaceful little march," she said. "They came from every side."

"They came from all around," said a young woman wearing a bandanna over her mouth after she made it past a wall of officers who had blocked her inside with their batons. "I tried to get out, but it was only when I started crying that they met me out." The woman declined to give her name. Some observers said it appeared demonstrators may have hidden dozens of protesters inside the parking garages on 15th Street. "I think they were hiding in the garages," said John Chodkowski, who lives on Capitol Hill and said he was there to watch the events unfold after being caught in them while on a bike ride. "This is pretty crazy."

Information officer Jim Shires of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department said he hadn't heard of anyone being injured in the scuffle. Shires said officers were separating those behind the barrier and interviewing them. He said he didn't know if anyone had been detained. Pete Nelson, 23, of Denver called the scuffle a "police riot," as he held a video camera, filming the wall of riot police.

"The cops were being brutally violent," he said. "They weren't doing anything but chanting." The crowd continued chanting "let them go" and singing songs nearly a half-hour after the crowd rushed to 15th. But by 8:15 p.m., the protest seemed to die down.



Read more: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/aug/25/protesters-allege-police-pepper-sprayed-peaceful-g/

:banghead:

there are more cops and s.w.a.t teams then you would find in new years eve in new york.most of the protesters arn't even doing anything.....

Source: Rawstory

Denver police have taken 100 protesters into custody after ordering them to disperse and spraying them with pepper spray from cannons.

The action happened last night but more details have emerged this morning.

Riot police forced several hundred protesters out of the civic center and blocked them before they could reach the 16th St. Mall. They used at least two armored vehicles, according to the Denver Post.

A spokeswoman for the convention's Joint Information Center, "said one officer fired pepper spray during the initial confrontation near the City and County Building and one officer fire pepper spray on 15th Street. She also said one officer fired pepper balls in once instance, but wasn't sure of the timing."

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/100_protesters_arrested_in_Denver_hit_0826.html

Read more: Denver police hit protesters with pepper spray from cannons, arrest 100

If these protesters were peacefully marching, the police had no right to use pepper spray or violence to disband them.

This isn't a repeat of 1968 folks. It's a repeat of 1932. "Free Speech Zones" ? "Free Speech Cages" WTF ? Dude, they stole my country !

Police blocks the route of the protesters, then surrounds them by blocking every exit, then orders them to "disperse" and when they are unable to follow that order, time for arrests and good ole police violence.

Ahhh.... fond memories of Soviet propaganda. Is this some sort of GOP false flag operation or what? If it is, I don't expect they'll be paid sufficiently to warrent geting "contacts fused to eyeballs".

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/25/blue_dogs/index.html

I weep for our country. :cry:

But we knew there was no way they were going to let Gitmo on the Platte stand empty, right?

negative photos for the Limbaugh crowd.

I think abuse of power occurs regularly. However, if they tell me to get out of the street I get out of the street. You will not win a battle against the cops.

when they can't. Nice tactic. I guess those boys just like whipping out their pepper spray.

Source: Rocky Mountain News

15TH AND CLEVELAND -- Police released the vast majority of the hundred-plus anarchist protesters they had detained on 15th Street, with a larger and growing mob cheering raucously as the protesters emerged with hands raised. The protesters said they saw "dozens" of people arrested, though it is not clear whether those people were jailed or simply released away from the scene.

"I was scared," said Alyssa Gunn, 22, one of the protesters held by police inside the entrance to a 15th Street parking garage for nearly an hour. "You could smell the tear gas and pepper spray in the air." The protesters have alleged police stormed a peaceful gathering in Civic Center Park, but some bystanders said that is not entirely the truth.

Officers in riot gear from the Denver Police Department and the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department formed a ring around the detained protesters until finally letting them go about 8:15 p.m. A line of Denver police in riot gear four officers deep now surrounds a much smaller group of detained protesters.



Read more: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/aug/25/many-anarchist-protesters-released-others-still-de/

Like there were no New Left protests at the Republican convention in 1968, or any other year, for that matter. The further left you are, politically, the more hostile you are to people who don't hold your exact, precise beliefs. That's what's helped kill Democratic candidates for the last 20 years or so.

the liklier you are to be a police instigator.

You mean a gang of white men with beer bellies dressed in PLO scarf throwing couple of stones in the general direction of their comrades in riot gear, and then after the police assault against the demonstrators talk amiably to their comrades in riot gear? :D

And I wasn't a delegate. Neither were the thousands of other demonstrators.

Ditto for Dallas in 1980.

And about every GOP convention since.

Shockingly, there are Americans who hold views to the left of the Democratic wing of the Single Unified Capitalist War Party.

Were the protesters really anarchists, or is the RMN trying to make them look like extremists?

Maybe it's just me, but that headline seems a little funny.

He's running the show for anarchy at the Dem. convention isn't he? That's what he said he was going to do.

You think NO ONE might have some bones to pick with the Democratic Party?

You think NO ONE but a rightist provocateur wants to demonstrate?

That's silly shit. And it's attempting to smear the protesters as tools of the right wing. How juvenile.

This is how us folks on the left keep on fucking ourselves. These morans remind me of the Communists in Germany that refused to stop Hitler by forming a coalition with the Social Democrats, they thought letting the Nazis in would make "The Revolution" come quicker. :eyes:

That really worked for us.. Besides we all know Democrats are way above being protested because they are so pure...

Why are you idiots blindly supporting abusive police power?

Looks an awful lot like this guy:

:D