Officers say protesters got violent blocking gate to Oakland shipping firm
Are you learning challenged? You do know, don't you, that the law prohibits blocking entrances and exits from public and private properties? Or do you think you are entitled to make your laws as you go?
And, BTW, they did use what are called "nonlethal munitions"? Would you prefer real steel bullets?
Police bashed for firing wooden bullets at crowd
Officers say protesters got violent blocking gate to Oakland shipping firm
By Thomas Peele and Carrie Sturrock
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
OAKLAND - Police fired tear gas, wooden and
rubber bullets, bean bags, and concussion grenades
at hundreds of war protesters Monday morning,
bloodying some who blocked entrances to a
shipping company with which the Defense
Department contracts.
Dozens of demonstrators were injured, mostly from
projectiles. At least three were hit in the face,
others in the back as they fled. Nine longshoremen
waiting to go to work were caught in the crossfire
and hit, a union official said. Five were taken to
hospitals. One had a broken thumb.
Police arrested 30 people.
Two Oakland City Council members said police
badly overreacted and called for investigative
hearings.
The Alameda County Central Labor Council issued a statement saying it wanted to know why police fired
on nonviolent protesters and workers trying to get to work.
Labor Council official Judy Goff demanded an investigation by the mayor and City Council.
Oakland police Chief Richard Word said officers used force after protesters threw "countless" rocks from
nearby railroad beds. No officers were injured, he said.
Demonstrators appeared to be taking little or no violent action when officers ordered the crowd to
disperse and then fired minutes later.
The confrontation was the first civil disobedience protest in the East Bay since the war began. The day the
war broke out, protesters shut down San Francisco's Financial District, but there were few reports of police
violence.
Several Oakland protesters said they believed police shot at them as punishment for the protest at APL,
formerly American President Lines. The company ships military cargo to the Persian Gulf.
Word said the company wanted the area cleared. "APL told us, 'You have to get them off the property,'"
he said.
"The police were trying to ensure (access) to our terminals would not be shut down," said APL spokesman
Jerry Drelling. "There are some major safety issues, and everyone wanted to make sure no one got hurt."
Scott Fleming, 29, an Oakland attorney, was hit five times in the back and side. He sported purple,
softball-size welts. "As soon as I saw them raise their guns, I turned and ran," he said. "This guy kept
shooting at my back. It obviously came from the same gun; it was rapid-fire."
About 8:30 a.m., motorcycle police herded about 150 demonstrators onto a side road lined with barbed
wire fences. Officers advanced on foot, firing volleys of wooden bullets and bean bags. Spent 12-gauge
shotgun shells littered the ground beneath them.
"Fall back! Fall back!" protesters yelled as projectiles whizzed through the air and concussion grenades
exploded.
A projectile hit Tim Ridolfi in the temple. He went down, bloodied, and a bystander applied a bandage. "I
turned my head. There was a crack, and I was bleeding," he said. Ridolfi, 27, a student at Golden Gate
University Law School, was acting as a legal observer for the National Lawyers Guild.
"I am assuming they aimed right at my head," he said. "They were shooting directly at the protesters."
Police stopped moving forward and the protesters moved back to 7th Avenue. There, they briefly blocked
another entrance to the port, and police again came in, gave a dispersal order and then fired concussion
grenades and projectiles.
The crowd fell back again, running through a line of tractor-trailers they were blocking. Scott Bohning, 43,
of Richmond, said he turned his head as he ran and a projectile hit him in the nose. "There was blood all
over," he said minutes later, clutching a bandage to his face. "Obviously they were shooting pretty high if
I got hit in the face. It was totally unnecessary."
Word said the wooden bullets are meant to be fired into the ground so they ricochet and hit people in the
leg. Rubber bullets and bean bags can be shot at people's torsos, he said.
Asked about people hit in the head with any projectiles and above the waist with wooden ones, Word
replied, "It is inappropriate if that happened."
Driven off Port of Oakland property, demonstrators marched downtown, stopping first at the federal
building and then City Hall.
Oakland City Councilwomen Jane Brunner and Nancy Nadel moved through the crowd, interviewing
people with wounds. "It's pretty upsetting to see these big welts," Brunner said. "We have to investigate
this. Even if one or two people have been disruptive, do you go in like that with that kind of force in a
demonstration?"
Cyprus Gonzales, 19, stood shirtless astride his bicycle with a large, swollen bruise on his back. Nadel
spoke with him and then said she would meet with Word. Her aide, Joel Tena, said later he was in the
middle of the protesters and saw no rocks thrown.
Anne Weills of the National Lawyers Guild said it will file brutality charges with the city's Citizen Police
Review Board. She called the officers' behavior the worst yet in Bay Area protests of the war.
"Some of them are outraged by our demonstrations," Weills said. "There's an edge here today that
wasn't" present at other protests, she said.
She said the police clearly panicked and used excessive force when they began firing wooden bullets.
"Those things could give you brain damage and blind you," Weills said.
At an afternoon news conference at City Hall, protest organizers displayed a table covered with projectiles
and ripped police for what they called brutality.
A Longshoreman's union board member called the police action a pre-emptive strike, and demanded the
release of those arrested and that charges be dropped.
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