Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,misc.legal,talk.politics.guns,talk.politics.misc,alt.politics.org.batf
From: [m c clary] at [netcom.com] (Michael McClary)
Subject: Re: BATF intent on 2/28?
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 1994 09:48:27 GMT

[d--ea--s] at [pica.army.mil] (Dennis G Rears (FSS)) writes:

>  Chicago 1968 - I am not too familiar with it.

I was there.  The Chicago police were definitely a "mob" in the organized
crime sense.  They systematically attacked cameramen.  A communications-
utility-worker's strike had been arranged beforehand to make it tough for
the networks to string video lines, so they thought it would work just
like smashing a film-camera always had.

Funny thing: The convention was the first major deployment of the
"minicam".  Minaturization had finally resulted in a one-man-luggable
TV camera/radio link.  The link was a BIG backpack and the camera was
an over-the-shoulder monster, but one man could stagger around with it
for a couple hours (which was what the battery was good for) and have
enough strength left to aim it.  And Chicago was a major routing center
and minor origination studio site for all three (at the time) TV networks.

So by the time the billyclub hit the lens, the image was already out
of the camera, radioed to the studio (perhaps with a bounce at a local
van), and out on the live network feed.  Oops!  "The whole world is
watching!"

Beating up reporters doesn't make for sympathetic coverage, either.
Especially when they're out-of-town celebs that you can't harass later.

The 101st Airborne (with the meanest reputation of any military group
of the time) was there, along with some guard.  They had jeeps with
machine-guns and others with crowd-control gadgets consisting of a
slightly-sloped 7-foot-tall wall of barbed wire on the front of the
jeep, for driving into crowds.  Plus full-auto rifles, teargas
projectors, etc.

The green-suits were under much better control than the blue-suits.
The blues would charge crowds with clubs swinging for no discernible
reason.  (I recall one charge into the stands at a rally.  There was
a flagpole between the bleachers and the cops, and some crazy or
provocateur climbed up to the bottom of the rope and started swapping
the Stars-and-Stripes for a Vietnamese flag.  When the crowd saw it
happening they started chanting "Half Mast!" to try to abort the
provocation, but the crazy was having none of it.  When he finished
and started down, the cops suddenly charged into the bleachers, clubbing
down people as they went.  They got nearly halfway through before they
ran down, and in my row the first one they left standing was the guy on
my left.)
-- 
=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=
		Suppose Bernie Goetz was on that train...
=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=	=
Michael McClary						[m c clary] at [netcom.com]
For faster response, address electronic mail to:	[m--h--l] at [node.com]