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Rubber bullets used protesters { April 7 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2524463http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2524463
Rubber Bullets Used on War Protesters in Oakland
Mon April 7, 2003 08:10 PM ET
By Elinor Mills Abreu
OAKLAND, Calif. (Reuters) - Oakland police fired rubber bullets to disperse about 750 anti-war demonstrators on Monday in what was believed to be the first use of such force against U.S. protesters since the war on Iraq began.
Thirty people were arrested and about a dozen others suffered minor injuries as police fired rubber bullets and wood pellets into the crowd blocking access to a port area company they claimed was profiting from the war.
Demonstrators charged that police overreacted but Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, a former state governor, defended them.
"Groups were coming to take over the port, all right, now that's not acceptable. .... Police, in the line of fire there reacted in the best way they know how. You've got some pretty violent people there, those fellows who put on black masks and picked up big rocks. One guy took a slab of concrete and threw it at one of the officers," he told Reuters.
Demonstrators gave different accounts: "I have been to many protests over the years, and I have never seen police resort to shooting people because they didn't like where they were standing," said Scott Fleming, 29, a lawyer hit several times in the back. "They had loaded guns and started charging."
The action is believed to be the first police use of anti-crowd munitions against U.S. demonstrators since President Bush launched an invasion aimed at toppling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
'NOT PROFESSIONAL'
The police action angered many in the crowd. This was not professional, to say the least," said Joel Tena, a constituent liaison for Oakland's vice mayor. "I was afraid for the safety of the protesters and concerned that a nonviolent protest had turned violent at the hands of police."
Susan Quinlan was hit with pellets twice in the back. "I never heard any warning to disperse. They pursued us and shot us as we walked away," she said.
Leone Reinbold, a spokeswoman for Direct Action to Stop the War which organized the protest, said she saw a policeman run his motorcycle into one woman and another man get hit with a rubber bullet to the nose.
"We weren't there to confront the police. We set up a peaceful picket line," she said. "The worst injury was to the long, tried-and-true tradition in this country of picketing."
Jerry Drelling, a spokesman for American President Lines, the company that was the object of the protest, said it has some government contracts but declined to provide details. He said no one at the firm had been injured.
At a separate demonstration, San Francisco police detained 20 protesters blocking the Federal Building. Anti-war activists resumed protests on Monday after a period of relative quiet in a city famous for its history of dissent.
Police arrested more than 2,000 people in San Francisco in the first two days of the war.
Also on Monday, New York police arrested 94 demonstrators at an anti-war action that blocked the entrance to the Manhattan building of the Carlyle Group, a $14 billion investment group that invests in the defense industry.
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