1968 Chicago riot cops set to ‘celebrate’ mass beatings
Published: June 18, 2009
Updated 5 months ago
Members of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) who participated in what an official report later described as a “police riot” during the 1968 Democratic National Convention are planning to get together next week to reminisce about the good times and set the record straight on “what really happened.”
FOP president Mark Donahue insists, “It’s just a get-together for guys who worked together 40 years ago. Nothing more.” However, the group’s own statements indicate that the reunion is intended as a political statement.
As the official Chicago Riot Cops website explains, “The time has come that the Chicago Police be honored and recognized for their contributions to maintaining law and order - and for taking a stand against Anarchy. The time was the hot summer month of August ‘68. The Democratic National Convention was about to start and the only thing that stood between Marxist street thugs and public order was a thin blue line of dedicated, tough Chicago police officers.”
The site offers information for those wishing to attend the reunion, along with a nostalgia-laden photo section featuring baton-wielding police officers cracking the skulls of demonstrators.
Chicago Copwatch, which tracks current police brutality, is organizing a rally and a march to the Fraternal Order of Police Hall on the night of the reunion. The group has issued a statement linking the events of the 1960s to present abuses:
“When [police] gather to celebrate one of the largest mass beatings in Chicago history they are also meeting to celebrate the savagery of that generation of the CPD. This is a celebration not only for the police who beat down DNC protesters, but also the ones who attacked the Puerto Rican community during 1966 Division Street Uprising, and assassinated Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. This reunion will be bringing together cops from this era with those who are currently oppressing our marches, occupying our communities, brutalizing, and mudering young people across the city.”
The Chicago Riot Cops website claims that “for decades the collective Left has white-washed what really happened during the riots of 1968 and 1969. Chicago Police officers who participated in the riots continue to endure unending criticism — all of which is unwarranted, inaccurate and wrong.”
However, much of the strongest criticism of the police came from the official Walker Report, issued in December 1968, which coined the term “police riot.”
As Time magazine reported in an article summarizing the report, the roots of the violence went back to the previous April, when then-Mayor Richard Daley had criticized the police for what he considered excessive restraint in dealing with the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King. When Daley and his aides took at face value the “diabolical threats” issued by the ragtag group of socialists, anarchists, pacifists, and pranksters who showed up to demonstrate at the Democratic National Convention, the stage was set for massive police overreaction.
The anxious and overworked police lashed out indiscriminately, and according to Time, “Witnesses frequently noted that if a demonstrator being chased by police got away, the cops would simply club whoever else was handy.” Despite the police violence, no disciplinary actions in response to “these violators of sound police procedures and common decency” had been carried out prior to the completion of the report.
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I can’t believe I hear people say “I hate getting fired, I’m going to become a cop”.
What city is Obama from ?
duhhh, errrr, Chicago!
So what?
Well, all the thugs will be in one place. You could think of it as a target rich environment.
Hell, next Charlie Company of 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd Infantry Division (the Americal Division) will have a reunion to commemorate the My Lai Massacre.
Yeah, and forty years from now all the torturers will get together for a reunion of their own, and we’ll be given revisionist stories about how it was all misunderstood, a leftist plot, totally needed or all three.
It’s not enough for these cops that they got away with indiscriminate beatings of innocent citizens, now they want you to fell good about it, too? Sorry, I watched that on TV while it was going on, and I will never forget the sight of cops going crazy, beating people who weren’t doing anything at all but watching. It was an OFFICIAL report that dubbed what happened a police riot, it wasn’t anyone on the left who did that.
Give it up, assholes. It was YOUR actions that caused you to get the rap you deserved, not anyone on the left or anywhere else. Your actions are what helped solidify the term PIGS for cops. Act like fascist pigs, don’t be surprised when peole call you what you are. The fact that you guys got away with it without even the usual “suspension”, which is really just a vacation, is what has helped bring on the current abuses that we read about every day in this country.
Go ahead and celebrate the violence that you did to people who were merely exercising their rights of free speech, but don’t expect any of us to think any better of you for it. In fact, some of us find your celebration to be in incredibly poor taste, and proof that you have no more concern for your fellow citizen than you did back then. Too bad you couldn’t learn anything from the last 40 years, but then, I don’t expect that from those who can’t learn.
If we cannot make Obama prosecute the Bush Torturers
we will have no better luck stopping police thuggery.
Work together.
Keep the pressure on Obama to prosecute.
SIGN THE PETITION
To Prosecute Them For Torture
http://ANGRYVOTERS.ORG
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Join them and call yourself a Patriot
Will Obama stand for Justice or get in the way of it?
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wjm50 is dead on. I’m old enough to remember watching that disgraceful spectacle on television; it was a real “police riot” in the worst sense of the term. They may have been “nervous and overworked” (who isn’t?), but they behaved like the fucking jack-booted thugs they are. In fact, it was that experience that signaled my own change from a gullible, ‘Leave it to Beaver’ view of cops to a more cynical and, eventually, almost adversarial position. Of course, today many cops should be in mental institutions or prisons instead of being employed in law enforcement.
I hope enough protesters turn out to ruin this fascist love-fest.
Next up will be a reunion of the Kent State National Gaurd troops that killed 4 students.
I realoly hope some of those people who were beaten by the police back in 1968 show up with their own clubs and beat the s**t out of these old facists. Let’s see how they like getting their heads cracked open!
I was there in Chicago in ‘68. Those scumball mother fkers have nothing to be proud of. Chicago will be hosting a Kristalnacht SS pride event next. It was a police riot,plain and simple, a bunch of ignorant criminal bullies turned loose on political dissent in this nation. We have never recovered from it. Since they’ll all be together in one place…Hmmmm. Sounds like a good place for a nuclear test.
The Fraternal order of Pigs is the main reason that police brutality is at an all time high in this police state. FOP must be outlawed as it pledges Pigs to lie cheat and steal to keep their brother pigs from prosecution. I’m about ready to buy a ticket to Shitcago and make some bacon. Let them try to beat an adult male instead of a kid. Fuck the Pigs!
They have a great racket going…we pay them to abuse us.
It seems as though one must be a sociopath in order to qualify for any position of authority in our country–be they cops or govt leadership. These pigs have absolutely no remorse for the injuries and deaths they inflicted on innocent Americans simply exercising their constitutional rights during the 1968 police riots. The cops created the riot–oh, yeah, and they still do. Anytime people peacefully protest, you can almost guarantee that it’s going to be law enforcement that starts the violence–they fabricate an excuse to beat and kill their citizens into submission. Only sociopaths would congratulate themselves and celebrate such shameful events.
They should beware, though. They are coming dangerously close to the straw that will finally break the camel’s back. IMO, our entire “leadership” (I use that term loosely) is pushing the people into having no other choice but to defend ourselves FROM THEM.
Great. Then they’ll all be at the same place at the same time.
As G. Gordon Liddy once said regarding law enforcement officials, “Go for a head shot; they’re going to be wearing bulletproof vests… Kill the sons of bitches.”
I knew these fucking pricks were still around. That fucking pig that beat the guy in the wheel chair is from chicago, his dad is probably one celebrating. Well, pigs, the world still is watching and I have a copy of “MEDIUM COOL”, with your pig faces. I hope you get drunk and get a DUI, oh hell, that’s right, your in chicago and your fuck buddies are on duty….
I believe a lot a Illinois state cops try to emulate Chicago cops. That’s because Illinois is as close to a police state as it gets. One of the most corrupt states in the country is always afflicting the people of the state with some of the most harshest laws in the country.
I saw it on TV and remember it like it was yesterday.
It WAS a police riot.
I hope some other people are getting ready for this reunion, too.
Certainly it will be a “target rich” environment.
I think every one of those thug cops should be hanged from a lamppost.
Cop on an overpass stops a guy for speeding, walks up to the door and gives him the what for.. blah, blah, arrogant cop BS. The guy starts to get a little steamed over it.
Cop then asks him what he does for a living. Guy smiles and replies: “I’m an asshole stretcher!”
Cop has to ask: “What in the world is an asshole stretcher?”
Guy explains while gesturing with his hands: “Well we start with a couple of fingers in there and we stretch them out till they’re about six feet..”
Cop is HORRIFIED! Screams: “What? What in the hell do you do with a six foot asshole?”
Guy says: “Well we generally give them a radar gun and then put them on an overpass..”