1968 Chicago riot cops set to ‘celebrate’ mass beatings

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.