Rage in the Streets by Jules Archer

Author:Jules Archer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2016-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

“A POLICE RIOT”

Inside the convention hall, Senator Abraham Ribicoff became aware of what was going on outside. From the rostrum he denounced Mayor Daley for using “Gestapo tactics.” Purple with rage, Daley shouted back a profane defiance.

Angry protests by many important Democratic leaders at the convention eventually compelled Daley to withdraw all police from the demonstrators’ gatherings. But by the time the “Battle of Chicago” was over, it had caused 700 civilian and 192 police injuries. Over 400 demonstrators had needed first aid for the effects of tear gas and Mace, and over 100 required hospitalization as a result of other injuries.

Police had jailed almost 700 demonstrators. Out of 300 reporters covering the convention and demonstrations, 65 had been either injured or arrested or had had their cameras smashed. The Chicago Newspaper Guild charged that the police had “conspired with each other to wage planned mayhem on men serving as the public’s eyes and ears.”

Thomas Pew, Jr., editor of the Troy, New York, Daily News, declared that only the presence of TV cameras had prevented the police riot from becoming a massacre. “If they did this while the whole world was watching,” he asked, “what might they have done if they had been off camera?”

The final verdict on the 1968 Chicago violence was pronounced by President Johnson’s own National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. Its Walker Report summed up its findings by bluntly describing the events in Chicago as a “police riot.”

Yet not a single Chicago police officer was indicted for assaulting reporters, innocent bystanders, and demonstrators who were exercising their First Amendment rights.

US Attorney General Ramsey Clark declared, “There was no need for police violence in Chicago. It did not maintain order, enforce law, prevent crimes, or protect lives and property. It did the opposite.… Hundreds of thousands of young people… have seen a raw demonstration of police capacity for violence, and they will never forget it.”

And they didn’t. Student alienation from government increased after the deplorable events in Chicago.

The Chicago police apparently believed the long-haired demonstrators were dangerous agitators against whom total force was both necessary and justified. The demand for “law and order” from a public grown weary of the political uproars in the 1960s supported police savagery against “disturbers of the peace.”

The violence in Chicago did not have the effect that Mayor Daley intended. (Newsweek called the riot “Daley’s gift to Richard Nixon.”) The riot soured voters on the Democratic party, and they elected Republican Richard Nixon to the White House. Some voters believed Nixon’s promise to end the Vietnam War quickly. Others voted for him in a backlash against the upsetting demonstrations.

Opinion polls found that most Americans who had watched the police riots on TV were sickened by them. Ironically, they were angry not at the brutal police but at the TV networks for showing them this violence. And they preferred to blame the youthful demonstrators who had been attacked rather than the police who had rioted against them.

Twenty-two years later the public came around to recognizing that police brutality was a fact of life for many citizens.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.