When Kate Bradshaw and I arrived at Public Square late Tuesday afternoon, it was clear something was going on. But we were stuck at the outer edges of the south side, near the sidewalk and Euclid Avenue. The entire south side of the square was packed with demonstrators, media and police. The latter were lined up in something like concentric circles, standing silently, looking outward and politely turning away anyone who tried to get closer to the clusters of demonstrators. A row of officers stood about 10 feet in front of us, and within minutes, another row formed behind us, on the sidewalk. Anyone who wanted to could leave the square, but no one could enter.
A few minutes later, dozens of bike cops streamed in, walking their bikes in single file. (You can see this on Facebook Live video that Kate shot.) We lost sight of them in the crowd; the square was so densely packed that it was difficult to tell what was going on from our vantage point, and if we moved we risked being asked to leave. But we’ve pieced together what happened from other sources.
Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Mark Naymik posted three live videos from inside the square on his Facebook page. In the first he notes that Westboro Baptist Church was there and had drawn counter-demonstrators. They were positioned in front of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which is near the bottom left corner of the overhead photos of the square. The other corners were occupied by the official speakers’ stage, where someone was holding forth about immigration; a police-violence protest; and a labor rally.
David Loomis, a managing director at Dix & Eaton, watched the scene through binoculars from an upper floor of a nearby office building. He noticed a man with a bullhorn, surrounded by a “media throng.” “What caught my attention,” Loomis recalls, “was that he was making his way from the middle of the square to where this crowd of people was standing. He didn’t stop. He just kept walking forward, even when there wasn’t any further place to go. So I saw that person as an instigator.”
The person, it turns out, was Alex Jones, host of Infowars.com. The crowd was the labor rally. Jones now claims he was “attacked” by “communists,” but his own video (at the link, 7-minute mark) and this one show what really happened: Jones, with team and media in tow and bullhorn in hand (globalist agenda, George Soros, blah blah) pushed his way to the front row of the labor demonstrators, who were trying to drown him out with chants like “nazi scum.” As Jones advanced, his bullhorn inches from a demonstrator’s face, another gave him a mild forearm shove; it had barely enough force to open a door. Jones immediately dropped his shoulder and barreled into the guy like a fullback, but lost his balance and toppled over. It was a classic little-brother move, and it worked: Mom cops rushed in to prevent a brawl, others started forming lines to prevent more people from reaching the scene.
The police reaction was “instantaneous,” Loomis says. “I’ve never seen anything so fast.”
We couldn’t discern any of this from where we stood. At some point we noticed that the bike cops were leaving again, then figured out why: the police-violence demonstrators were on the move, headed back toward East 4th Street, where the major media are camped out in restaurants and which leads to the entrance to Quicken Loans Arena. The bike cops paced them, but did not interfere in any way.
This is how the police have operated all week. They are everywhere, in large numbers, always close enough to rush in but far enough to let people move around. The slight distance, and constant silence, make it easy to forget they’re even there. On the relatively rare occasions when pro- and anti-Trump people get into shouting matches, they don’t even flinch, just watch from behind their sunglasses. When they move through the crowds, which get thick on and around East 4th, they never shove, they just navigate slowly like everyone else. If they need to move quicker, they remain single file but place a hand on the shoulder of the officer in front of them.
They get applause from convention-goers and onlookers everywhere they go. Loomis noted that despite their usually stoic faces, they are unfailingly friendly, shaking hands, chatting and posing for pictures with anyone who approaches them.
Very few are wearing what you would call riot gear. In Public Square on Tuesday, I saw maybe half a dozen. One was carrying a paintball gun, which a local police source told me is modified to shoot “pepper balls.” He didn’t fire it.
Loomis says that Indiana state troopers are using an upper lobby in his building as a resting area. He showed photos he took of Tuesday’s incident to a captain, who explained the surge of bike cops into the square that Kate and I witnessed: They use the bikes as a mobile barrier to prevent brawls.
As the demonstrators left the square after Tuesday afternoon’s drama, reporters and gawkers trickled out as well. The cop lines dissipated and the square was accessible again. That’s when Triumph the Insult Comedy Dog’s “Eastboro, Southboro, Northboro, Ryan Seachrestboro Baptist Church” rally got under way (video here and here). This drew another crowd, but the vibe was happy and most of the police — well over 100 remained — stayed on the edges of the square.
When Triumph’s event ended, a small number of cops formed a circle in the middle of the square. As people left, more cops joined the circle, gradually enlarging it. Throughout this process they were silent, except to ask people not to pass them. I didn’t see anyone argue. And this is how they cleared the square, without ever issuing a command. It was slow but effective.
Judging from comments under videos of scenes from the streets of downtown Cleveland on our Facebook page and others’, I think it’s easy to believe that the situation here is worse than it really is. Even when the streets are packed and pro- or anti-Trump demonstrators are bellowing (and the ever-present Jesus guys are droning on through their industrial-strength bullhorns), the atmosphere is calm — largely because the police are setting that tone. All things considered, the situation on the ground could be much, much worse.
This article appears in Jul 14-21, 2016.