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Fat Erect Scooter Pigs

The NYPD breaks out its newest toy on protesters.

by B.D. | 2003.03.25

As a shit-storm of American bunker-busters rained down on Baghdad, the streets of New York again filled with anti-war protesters. Spurred by the success of the February 15th demonstrations and a welcome dose of early spring sunshine, around 200,000 marchers spent last Saturday shutting down the city.

It began pleasantly enough; the merry throngs turned the thirty-odd blocks spanning from Times Square to Washington Square Park into a sea of colorful placards and festive outfits. The Raging Grannies raged, the Missile-Dick Chicks swung around their ICBM-strapped codpieces and chubby toddlers swayed on the shoulders of their peace-loving parents. Even the NYPD, who had spent the previous month’s protest roughly shoving demonstrators into fenced-off pens, seemed content to let the mass of humanity glide unfettered towards their downtown destination.

Although many New Yorkers without colorful dreads, tom-tom drums and soymilk flasks participated in the event, Washington Square Park carried all the trappings of the stereotypical hippied-out protest. Dancers gyrated with their flushed faces angled towards the March sun, peace signs were chalked over every square inch of asphalt and vendors hawked the latest threads from the activist haute couture 2003 collection. The gaiety was almost contagious.

Things took a turn for the fucked when 4:00 arrived. Scant minutes after the march’s permit expired at 4:00 PM, a phalanx of New York’s finest decided to make their presence felt. Although many of the protesters had not completed the full route, police attempted to draw a swift conclusion to the anti-war carnival. In came the officers in riot gear, in came the paddy wagons, in came the hostility that had plagued the closing hours of the previous protest. Even with the obvious police presence, however, Washington Square Park remained flush with enthusiastic demonstrators.

With police stifling the entrance into the park, some of the more emboldened marchers splintered off into small but rambunctious brigades. The call and response of “Whose streets? Our streets!” was quickly resurrected as the group roiled into Greenwich Village thoroughfares. The NYPD, who had been thwarted by “snake marches” (where protestors weave through the streets in a serpentine fashion instead of in a straight line) in February, employed a new and improved technique of crowd management. The force’s most physically imposing and aggressive officers were given scooter-like motorcycles which they would use to head off the offshoot marches. Like a swarm of metal hornets, the police would veer in front of the demonstrators, leap off their vehicles and create an impenetrable wall of scooter and pig.

Unlike the February 15th event, this Saturday’s festivities were attended by a healthy amount of radical militants. Bandanas and Black Blok-esque outfits were fairly commonplace in the Washington Square Park vicinity. The surreptitious behavior can certainly be excused – police equip with video cameras leered from park-side rooftops like uniform-clad gargoyles. The outfits did draw unnecessary attention to the wearer on occasion -- a particularly loathsome and large-domed officer screamed, “you want to wear a bandana, stay right there” at a protester attempting to clamor around the scooter blockade.

The protestors’ finest moment of rebellion came late. After being rousted from Washington Square Park, a ragtag band of shorty-wops regrouped in Union Square Park to voice their dissention. When the police attempted to corral the little rascals, the urchins fled around the corner leaving a trail of upended metal barricades. The snarling flatfoots gave chase, but the petulant pint-sized provocateurs were able to escape into the encroaching spring dusk.

The moral of the story? New York’s street-avenue grid is not a welcoming environment for confronting police. The authorities can easily surround any outburst from two sides within a matter of minutes and choke the life out of an impromptu demonstration. Loosie recommends that protesters intent on engaging the swine should develop new strategies that involve high-speed chaos, heavily-trafficked pedestrian intersections and smoke bombs. Look to the Iraqi Black Pajamas for urban fighting techniques to adopt.

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