Protests

by | May 20, 2012 | Crime, Society

Story:

Protesters throw fence on police 5:43 p.m.

Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, dressed in his white uniform and wearing sunglasses, has appeared behind the thick line of police in riot gear.

The police are facing off with protesters at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Cermak. A large crowd of protesters is gathered in the street on Cermak.

Police and protesters are nose to nose, pushing at each other. Some protesters fall when police shove them with batons held horizontally in both hands. Periodically, police pull a protester out and take them away.

At one point, protesters facing the police threw a section of metal street barricade on top of the line of police, who caught it with their hands and passed it back through the line of cops.

via Chicago Tribune.

And either a differing account or a wholly new event:

Pizza proprietors fail to ride NATO summit wave 7:21 p.m.

The four operators of Papa John’s Pizza, 80 E. Cermak Road, watched from their closed storefront window as the bloody skirmishes took place outside.

“I had as good a front row view as anybody,” said Steve Feldberg, one of the operating partners.

The pizza proprietors originally decided to stay open during the NATO summit weekend in hopes of picking up extra delivery business from customers who didn’t want to leave their homes.

That turned out not to be the case, and sales lagged below expectations, he said. Just before noon Sunday morning, they made the decision to send staff home and close for the rest of the day, citing safety concerns.

“We could just tell what was coming,” Feldberg said.

He and his colleagues decided to stick around out of curiosity. At one point, the group watched as protestors wielded a barrier fence above their heads and started trying to throw it toward his store.

“We were all watching it as it happened,” Feldberg said. “There was nothing we could do.”

Police were able to take control of the fence and pass it safely to the rear of their flank.

via Chicago Tribune.

Whether this is one incident or two there can be no doubt as to a few facts:  The protesters tried to hurl a section of a metal fence at someone, & this is not the kind of non-violent action the protesters claim to be all about.

Related Posts

Feds Ask Web Firms For Account Passwords

The U.S. government has demanded that major Internet companies divulge users' stored passwords, according to two industry sources familiar with these orders, which represent an escalation in surveillance techniques that has not previously been disclosed. If the...