>Overstressed police officers? This is the first time I've heard this
>theory! In fact, the police over-reaction was caused by an
>inexperienced police force which, like many police forces across the
>country at that time, didn't take activists seriously.
There were very few cops, and as the ones I talked to told me, they were in way over their heads. At the end of the protest week, I walked up to a gaggle of 'em and said "This wouldn't have happened in New York. The NYPD would have surrounded the meeting site with 20,000 cops and no one would have gotten close." One answered, "The NYPD knows crowd control. We don't have that kind of experience in the west."
Doug