Were Oakland Police's Tactics Against Anti-Trump Protesters 'Excessive'?
In the evening after last Friday's inauguration, rain dumped on downtown Oakland, and a crowd of protesters lingering in Frank Ogawa Plaza near City Hall grew restless. After a day full of demonstrations, they were getting soaked trying to wait out a storm, for more than an hour, in hopes of beginning the nighttime march. "Are we marching or what?" someone shouted. "Fuck Donald Trump!" another person yelled. A man with a megaphone called out, "Whose streets?" The 200 people huddled together yelled back, "Our streets!" And then everyone followed him out of the plaza. The protest was underway.
It wouldn't last long.
Officers from the Oakland Police Department and other agencies immediately flanked the march. To the protesters' left, motorcycle cops sped in a single-file line on the sidewalk. To their right, police ran on foot. Behind the action was another row of officers, followed by bike cops, law-enforcement vans and vehicles, and even a helicopter circling above.
Officials framed these actions as necessary steps to prevent vandalism and ensure the safety of both officers and participants. But protesters denounced the show of force as unusual, excessive, and unnecessary.
EmilyRose Johns, a legal observer with a local chapter of National Lawyers Guild, commented that she had never seen these kinds of police tactics used before Friday. "The conduct of the Oakland Police Department went beyond any suppression efforts I have seen recently," she wrote in an email. "It was a likely unlawful, and certainly baffling, infringement upon people's First Amendment activities."
Read more: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/critics-call-oakland-polices-tactics-against-anti-trump-protesters-excessive/Content?oid=5091287
