NYC's Top Cop Slams Peace Protesters

Newsmax.com ^ | 3-21-2003 | Carl Limbacher

[Paul Atreides]

As angry demonstrators clogged streets and shut down highways and bridges in New York, Chicago and San Francisco on Thursday, New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said that this generation of antiwar protesters has become particularly vicious.

"There is a hard core group.... who are particularly nasty," Commissioner Kelly told WOR Radio's Bob Grant. "I've noticed this and I've been around a long time. It's kind of like the Vietnam war protests."

Kelly complained that the anti-Iraq war protesters had engaged in acts like "spitting on police officers, cursing at them, trying to instigate them." He added, "It really is a disgrace for people that supposedly want peace."

"There are police officers who are out there trying to do their job, trying to protect people's liberties and rights to voice their opinions," New York's top cop explained. He might have also noted that New York's finest sacrificed 23 hero cops in the 9/11 attacks.

He said his police force had shown "tremendous restraint" in dealing with the hostile peaceniks. Still, "there is this hard core group of demonstrators (and) they're there to cause problems," Kelly told Grant.

[martin_fierro]

Bump

[MEG33]

They are terrorists.

[Slyfox]

He added, "It really is a disgrace for people that supposedly want peace."

I prayed that all these people would show their true faces. There is a God in heaven and He does answer prayers.

[areafiftyone]

Yesterday they blocked a few streets in NYC specifically at rush hour to cause chaos. The cops were expecting them in NYC on the 23rd and they didn't realize that there were going to be so many last night and the cops were not really prepared. I refuse to call them peaceniks anymore they are now enemy combatants!

[Republican Red]

Correct me if I am wrong but I think Fox reporter (ex-Marine) Greg Kelly is the Commissioners son. Greg Kelly is embedded with troops on the March to Bagdad and has been providing video phone reporting all night.

[T Lady]

These goons are anything BUT peaceful.

...Just listen to some of their rhetoric sometime. It's absolutely breathtaking. And they have the unmitigated gall to call President Bush a Nazi, while running interference of one the vilest and oppressive dictators on this planet. This is truly mind-boggling!

-Regards, T.

[Freedom4US]

Makes me wonder about the journalistic integrity of some of the reporting that came out of the 60's. There was a website article several years ago written by a Chicago PD officer who was at the 1968 democratic national convention, and his account was certainly, uh, different than the History Channel or what they teach in school. Careful camera editing can sometimes make things appear a lot different than they really are.

[vastrightwc]

One thing (among many things) that make me mad about these protesters is how much energy and money these cities have to spend dealing with these clowns. We are always hearing how strapped local governments are for money to combat terror on a local scale, yet daily we are having scores of law enforcement directing their attention towards this nonsense.

[Trust but Verify]

My God, these people should be SHOT for spitting on NYC cops after all they've been through. There are no words to express the contempt I have for them.

[T Lady]

Oops, I meant to say "running interference for one of the vilest and oppressive dictators on the planet."

T.

[KSCITYBOY]

Peace has nothing to do with it. This is the real face of the left showing it's true colors. I hope all of America can witness the leftwings hate for our ideals. They are ugly SOBs.

[mountaineer]

The Pittsburgh protests Thursday evening:

Two months of goodwill between police and antiwar protesters dissolved quickly yesterday when a march through Downtown and the South Side during rush hour ended with 122 arrests, including several for inciting a riot.

Antiwar activists the world over had been planning protests for the day after the war with Iraq started, and the leaders in Pittsburgh, as in other cities and countries, had expected the intensity to increase.

It did. There were protests in 500 American cities, reports of 100,000 marching in Athens, Greece, and 5,000 in London, where the demonstrators shut down streets leading to the houses of Parliament. Demonstrations, too, took place in Muslim countries such as Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Turkey.

The first part of the two-hour march, which started after a 5 p.m. rally outside the William S. Moorhead Federal Building, looked much like recent ones. About 500 people participated. [I imagine the organizers were more than a little disappointed in the meager turnout!] Children walked next to their mothers. College students held multicolored "no-war" balloons. Some motorists responded to the chants and posters by high-fiving marchers and flashing the peace sign.

But as darkness fell and the protesters marched outside the Golden Triangle, the mood changed. When the march went to the South Side, police forced it to turn back, and around 7 p.m. everyone went back across the Smithfield Street Bridge and into Downtown. Up to then, police had tolerated occasional taunts, profanity and middle fingers flashed at them from the rowdier marchers. But then, as the marchers continued to disrupt traffic, they finally ran out of patience.

By the time the march reached William Penn Place, near Seventh Avenue and Ninth Street, the crowd had shrunk to less than half its original size. But the police presence swelled, and their patience with demonstrators ended at 7:20 p.m. Police in riot gear and others on horses appeared. Various officers told demonstrators to keep moving down a sidewalk. Other police shouted at the marchers to leave Downtown. Many began crossing the street, inflaming officers who had ordered them to move along the walk.

Then the arrests began. Police flung some of the louder protesters to the ground, riling the crowd. Other marchers were pinned against a building on William Penn Place and informed that they were under arrest.
full story, Post Gazette.

[Paul Atreides]

If the cops in all of these cities don't start bashing some skulls and hauling off some of these protestors, people are going to start running them down when they get in the way.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Great point about Chicago - I love reexamining history in light of recent revelations.

OTOH, Daley was no Little Lord Fauntleroy and probably did tell his cops to "crack heads" (not that some of those heads shouldn't have been cracked, however). Sort of ironic that in so doing Daley, the democrat, hosed his fellow democrats in the '68 election.

[gunnedah]

Is Ellen Rat(ner) leading them?

[hobbes1]

I was solicited to take a flyer for a "peace" Rally on my way to the Bus yesterday, at the Port Authority.

I told the little 20 something, in a very crisp voice..."F**K OFF you ignorant little commie" .....I LMAO as she started backpeddaling...

It was probably Rude, but I find their prescence rude....

[old school]

No! They shouldn't be shot. That would be uncompassionate! However, they should be beaten into a pile of hair and snot!

[Paul Atreides]

I like the thought of pelting them with eggs and rotten veggies.

[old school]

The Cops in those cities are not going to bash any skulls, because they don't want to be hauled into Federal Court and face Prison for Civil Rights Violations; nor do they want to incur the expense of losing their jobs and having to pay Lawyer's fees!