Kristian Williams - Our Enemies in Blue - Police and Power in America

53 Stark, Police Riots, 6.54 Quoted in Ronald Fraser et aI., 1968: A Student Generation in Revolt (New Yo rk Pantheon Books, 1988), 195.55 Fraser et a!., 1968, 199.56 Gilje, Rioting, 164.57 Stark, Police Riots, 6.58 Ali and Watkins, Marching in the Streets, 72.59 Joe R. Feagin and Harlan Hahn. Ghetto Revolts: The Politics o/ Violence in American Cities (NewYo rk: The Macmillan Company, 1973), 105. The Oakland police took the opportunity to have ashoot-out with the Black Panthers, who were actively (and successfully) discouraging rioting. Thecops fired over 2,000 rounds into a house where Eldridge Cleaver and Bohby Hutton were hidingin the basement. They then filled the house with tear gas, starting a fire in the process. Cleaver andHutton surrendered. Cleaver, who stripped naked before leaving rhe house, was beaten by police.Hutton was shot and killed after he surrendered. He was seventeen years old. Ali and Watkins,1968, 76-77; and Henry Hampton et aI., Voices o/Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil RightsMovement ftom the 1950s Through the 1980s (New Yo rk: Bantam Books, 1990), 514-5 17.60 Stark, Police Riots, 4-5 .61 Stark, Police Riots, 6.62 Ibid. Police vandalism was a common response to riots, especially those with a racial component.The "Soul Brother" signs that marked Black-owned businesses offered them a level of protectionfrom the angry crowds, but made them targets fo r the police and Narional Guard. Feagin andHahn, Ghetto Revolts, 175 and 192-193.63 Stark, Police Riots, 6.64 Ali and Watkins, 1968, 204.65 Quoted in Ali and Wa tkins, 1968, 201.66 Stark, Police Riots. 5-6.67 Fraser et aI., Student Generation in Revolt, 302.68 No exhaustive study of the year's events is available; likely, none is possible. The National StudentAssociation counted 221 demonstrations on 1 () 1 college campuses during the first half of the year.Likewise, a review of the New York Times and Washington Post covering September 16 to October15, 1968, shows reports of216 separate protest events, 35 percent of which involved violence.Jerome H. Skolnick, The Politics of Protest: Violent Aspects 0/ Protest and Conftontation;A Report Submitted by Jerome H Skolnick [The Skolnick Report; Report of the Task Force onViolent Aspects of Protest and Confrontation to the National Commission on the Causes andPrevention of Violence] (Washington, D.C.: Supt. of Documents, U.S. Government PrintingOffice, 19(9), 15 and 3.69 Stark implies that television was the crucial factor in creating the DNC's infamy: "[EJ vents inChicago were unique only in tbe quality and quantity of media coverage." Stark, Police Riots, 4.70 Gilje, Rioting, 166.71 Quoted in Norman Mailer, Miami and the Siege 0/ Chicago: An Informal History of the Republicanand Democratic Conventions 0/ 1968 (New Yo rk: The Wo rld Publishing Company, 19(8), 179.72 Quoted in Mailer, Miami and the Siege o/ Chicago, 177.13 Mailer, Miami and the Siege o/ Chicago, 175.74 Daniel Walker, Rights in Conflict: Chicago's 7 Brutal Days (New Yo rk: Grosset and Dunlap,19(8), vii.75 Walker, Rights in Conflict, xii.76 The term "police riot" is not the hyperbole many assume it to be. During the June 19-2 1,1968, disturbances in Berkeley, police not only beat, gassed, and threatened scores of peaceablecitizens, they also threw rocks at crowds, broke windows, and engaged in other vandalism. "Apoliceman was seen knocking in a window at a bookstore .... Several persons reported damageto their residences after the police had forced their way inside. A number of orhers claimed thatpolice beat their automobiles with riot batons, causing dents and breaking headlights." Stark,Police Riots, 48.77 Stark, Police Riots, 18-2 1.78 A Berkeley police memo dated August 21, 1968, notes, "Both civilians and officers have reportedobserving a sort of 'one-upmanship' phenomenon in squads without leaders of a supervisory rank,Each officer seems not to want anyone to feel he is less zealous than anyone else in the squad, andin tense encounters, a spiraling fo rce-level was observed." Quoted in Stark, Police Riots, 53.79 Walker described the attitude of the Chicago police going into the 1968 Democratic NationalConvention (with echoes of Henry Bellows, half a century before): "They believed that even anorderly crowd of peaceful demonstrators could easily develop into a mob led by a few determinedagitators into violent action." Walker, Rights in Conflict, 59.80 Stark, Police Riots, 138.8! "Thus, it is not the use of violence that makes police riots unusual events, but simply the (on-285