I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you.
It comes in the form of this little pink card.
It says official press and it's got the Chicago Police Department written across the bottom of it.
I'd like to read the back of this card.
It says this official identification card is the property of the Chicago Police Department and may be revoked for just cause.
It doesn't specify what just cause might be, but it does say that the holder is entitled to pass police and fire lines whenever formed subject to approval orders and directions of police in charge of lines.
And then it has the usual clause about any person attempting to use press credentials not entitled to, etc.
subject to X number of dollar fine.
What this means to me is that the, in this city at least, that you're free to cover what's going on subject to the discretion of the Chicago Police Department.
On Monday night of the convention week, when the park was cleared, there were a lot of people, people were shoved out of the park, had nowhere to go, they went into the street.
When the police swept across, I was all by myself on this island in the middle of the street.
Well, there was one other photographer, but he wasn't right with me, he was just up the street a bit.
When the police came toward me, one guy came over at me, toward me, kind of an angle, he went out of his way, in other words, to come toward me.
And I immediately, without waiting to hear what he was going to say, pulled the card out of my pocket and held it up for him to see and identified myself verbally and he said, I don't care who you are, get up there like everybody else.
And he had a club in his hand and he was, you know, holding it in the, not over his head, threatening with it, but he had it like this, you know, waist level.
And he pointed with a club.
So I didn't say anything, I just got off the island and got up on the sidewalk like everybody else and walked south down into this intersection.
But this is the kind of incident that occurred time and time again during the convention on the streets, in the park, down in front of the Hilton, everywhere, everywhere you turned.
Anytime anyone saw you and you tried to step out of the crowd or become, or get out of the crowd or approach the police line or approach shooting the assignments, shooting the, what was going on, there was no specific assignment, from behind the police lines or from the side of the police lines, where you were by yourself, you were approached and told to get the hell out of there.
I was standing in front of the Lincoln Park Dodge dealership over there.
There was a Corvette parked at the curb right in front of me.
It had just pulled in, but it was just sitting there and there were three young people in it, two girls and a guy behind the wheel.
The top was down or off the car and they were just, they were sitting there and they, saying some things, you know, slogans and so forth, waving a flag.
One girl, the girl sitting on the far side, the far passenger side was holding a white flag with a peace symbol on it and holding it up in the air.
There was a car parked right behind the Corvette at the corner and there were some policemen standing on the island in the middle of the street.
And they'd been there 10 or 15 minutes, suddenly, without any apparent provocation, they just rushed across the street and began screaming and screaming at the kids in the car.
They surrounded one guy on the sidewalk side and the other two on the street side and began using their nightsticks on the occupants of the car.
And the guy on the other side snatched the flag away from the girl.
Initially, when I saw these guys coming across the street, I was standing right next to the Corvette.
But I turned around and I backed out of there as fast as I could because I didn't, it looked like the one guy going around the front of the car was coming after me.
I turned around, I looked back and nothing was, nobody was coming after me.
I saw it was taking place at the Corvette.
So I moved in a little closer, about, you know, 30 feet away or so and shot a quick, quick frame.
I was using flash at that time.
I didn't think in terms of what kind of equipment I should have to use in order not to draw attention to myself.
I was there as an impartial observer.
When I made the shot, I noticed out of the right side, or the, you know, in the periphery of my vision to the right, an officer moving in toward the front of the car, another policeman.
And I turned to my right and this cop was running up, the cop was running up the sidewalk behind me and had his arm out, was going to tackle me.
And I, my momentum in turning to the right enabled me to sidestep and then he hit the sidewalk and I ran down the street a few yards.
I turned around, I shot a glance over my shoulder, just like two seconds later.
He was gone, nobody was coming after me.
I stopped, I went out in the street, I moved up.
The action had stopped at the Corvette, which my picture shows, the picture I made.
I moved up the street but somebody was getting, somebody was getting slammed up against the car and trounced on by some other officers up toward the corner.
So I moved up the street and I didn't feel safe.
I didn't know what, you know, which way to turn or I looked around and nobody was, nobody was paying any attention to me.
So I moved in a little bit closer.
I was maybe 50 feet away from this car where this guy was getting, the police were using night sticks on him and slamming him up against the car.
He was a reporter.
The guy was a reporter for a paper here in Chicago.
He had credentials.
And evidently he had yelled at the police at the Corvette to stop what they were doing.
He did not attempt to interfere with what they were doing.
The picture I made of the police at the Corvette showed they were stopped.
They had not, nobody was coming toward them.
Then I moved up on the sidewalk and I looked around, nobody paid any, had, you know, looked toward me or come toward me as a result of taking that picture, using the flash.
I didn't call any and do attention to myself so I figured, all right, so I moved in, I moved up on the sidewalk and I made another shuttle instead.
The beating had stopped and somebody was helping him into the car behind the Corvette and they were, they took him to the hospital.
Well, after the big melee, the confrontation or whatever you want to call it at Balboa, Balboa, Michigan, crowd had moved north on Michigan Avenue and there was a police line formed across the street, across Michigan Avenue, just north of Balboa.
And a woman came off the sidewalk on the other side of the street and walked up to the, you know, facing the police line and she was, you know, middle -aged, rather well dressed.
She was carrying a shopping bag and she started shaking her finger and saying something very loudly, you know, toward, you know, directing this verbal attack in the direction of the police.
But she just stood there.
She was, you know, 20 feet away or so.
And Doveridge was more or less in the middle of the street.
He walked over to her and told her to get off the street and he looked over toward me and said, you too, you know, and I held up the credential and told him who I was and he turned away, seemed satisfied, and he told her again to clear the street.
She didn't move.
Well, next thing he didn't say a word, he brought up a can of mace, squirted it in her face, she threw her hands up in front of her face, she screamed and turned away.
And almost in the same motion, he just brought his arm around and aimed the can at me and came toward me.
Well, I had the camera up ready to make a picture of what I thought was going to be a routine arrest, several of which had just preceded this.
It was totally out of context with everything that had happened just moments before, where they were making arrests calmly in the middle of the street, people kneeling in the street.
And as I say, I wasn't part of the crowd, but he's coming toward me.
I made the picture right away as soon as he turned his arm, as soon as his arm came toward me.
After the macing or the attempted macing incident just north of Balboa, I had come up the street to this point.
I was standing on the traffic island in the middle of Michigan Avenue.
All up Michigan Avenue, police had formed up and were pushing sweeping demonstrators toward the west in that direction at the intersections and the police officers are trying to disperse people and so forth.
They're prodding and shoving with clubs and so forth.
When they got to Jackson, they said I was in the middle of the intersection, and I saw not a policeman, about a dozen or 15 or so, stop right here, just inside Jackson, just off Michigan.
I couldn't tell what was going on, but there was an awful lot of commotion over here.
People were jammed onto the sidewalk.
Spectators and demonstrators all mixed together.
You couldn't tell who was one from the other hardly.
There were some medics in white uniforms, some of whom turned out to be doctors.
So I crossed from the light standard around over onto the north side of Jackson and across the street over to about this position in the right turn lane, just off the curb.
There were a group of policemen, about 12 or 15 cops, just standing there, and there was a guy in a khaki uniform, GI uniform, in fact in a special forces army uniform, who was beating and kicking a man who was lying in the street holding his head and keeping his knees together, trying to keep from getting beat too badly, who turned out to be a doctor, who was wearing whites.
And I got up, I raised the camera immediately and got a picture.
Now, ever since the incident happened, the confrontation at Balboa, Michigan, between the demonstrators and the police, I had this press card in my hand like this, visibly displayed at all times while I was shooting, supporting the camera with my left hand and shooting with my right.
And that card was not in my way, and I had it in my hand the whole time.
It was immediately challenged, immediately seen, and people yelled at me, cops yelled at me, I should say, to get the hell out of here, get out of here with that camera, you know.
And I lowered the camera, held it in my right hand, and held this out as they came toward me.
Several officers came toward me, four or five of them came toward me, and I held the card out in front of me and told them who I was, I just, you know, told them who I was verbally.
I had on a helmet, a couple of cameras, dressed in slacks and a windbreaker.
I wasn't costumed any particular way except I knew I was going to be out covering what could be kind of a heavy situation.
It wasn't exactly a tea party, and everybody knew it was going to be anything but a tea party.
I was dressed accordingly.
Well, they kept coming, and just then somebody must have yelled at this soldier or something because he backed off, that doctor he was beating, and the police kind of ushered him off to one side.
And these two policemen came right down on top of me.
Immediately, again, I held this thing, and I grabbed a shot of the soldier as he backed off, trying to get a clear shot of his face, and they came on, little cops came, were coming toward me, came on a little bit faster.
And I identified myself again, backed away a few steps, backed up onto the curb, out of the curb lane, onto the curb, and held this thing out again, and then I was struck.
I was struck from both the right and the left side simultaneously, and I brought my hands up in front of my face and took my chin down into my chest and tried to cover up as best I can, but I was being struck from two sides simultaneously.
And I can't swear to how many officers were involved in the attack, but there were at least two for that reason.
I went down on my knees and held my head.
The helmet got, which was securely fastened with a chin strap, was yanked loose and torn off my head, in other words, and fell to the sidewalk on my left side, and I put my hands over my head, and I got several blows on the back and across my shoulders and on both sides, across my hands.
My right hand was broken, and all of a sudden it just stopped.
Never at any time was I between the police and the people they were attempting to control, or in the case of this soldier, not control.
But they knew they were doing something wrong, and it was documented.
There were pictures showing what was going on.
I made them, and they didn't want them.
They didn't want them made.
That's my opinion of what happened.
Thank you.
