Protesters gather, squads of police emerge

Carlo Garcia never should have gone to jail on Tuesday. Neither should have Alicia Forrest, though she should have known the cops always come for those who question, even legitimately, why they are arresting someone else.

The odd thing is, they weren't at first going to arrest Alicia Forrest, even after one officer dropped her right in the park grass with his baton. She had gotten up and was talking with reporters when suddenly she was hauled away.

An even stranger thing is that now, three days into convention-week demonstrations and protests, the number of people arrested so far wouldn't fill much more than a couple sheriff's buses.

Four years ago, with the Republicans in New York, the number of people hauled off to jail on the first day was larger than the population of many eastern plains towns.

I spent most of Tuesday trying to understand this difference.

On nomination night four years ago, the largest number of police officers visible on the Manhattan streets in one place was maybe six. Another six might be a full city block away.

With $50 million to spend on security, Denver, it seems, has hired every cop in Colorado - many stationed in Civic Center. This is fine if you are a delegate or visiting celebrity to this fine city; you could fairly pin your money in your hair and not be bothered.

But it is pretty much your backside if you have decided to spend the week protesting or demonstrating anything.

I have watched this dance to date.

Protesters gather and pick up their signs in Civic Center. Police officers, almost all of them in riot helmets and full armor, emerge from the shadows of the trees and move along the sidelines of the park with them.

Cheers, chanting and already loud guys on megaphones draw them closer. Other police teams soon emerge. Depending on the level of the shouting, chanting and cheering, mounted policemen arrive.

This is how Carlo Garcia went to jail. He was shouting at a group of gay-hating and baiting bigots who'd taken up the demonstration spot he and his group had long ago secured a permit from the city to occupy.

Rather than go after the gay-hating and baiting knuckleheads, the riot cops came for Carlo Garcia. Alicia Forrest never should have attempted to show them the error of their ways.

When Glenn Spagnuolo of the Re-create 68 group arrived with a host of media to explain his version of what had happened Monday night, in which some 100 people were arrested, we were surrounded at police headquarters by, you guessed it, yet another swarm of police officers in riot gear.

Trust me, it makes you shake a little. All you can think is that you are just doing your job.

Had I weeks ago thought of participating in a demonstration, I would have turned and walked home the minute I arrived at Civic Center and seen the flotillas of slow-driving police SUVs with riot policemen hanging off the sides.

I would have looked at the dark figures beneath the trees, the others on bicycles, motorcycles and on horseback. Sneeze wrong and I could be in jail.

"It is about keeping people away," Glenn Spagnuolo said after his news conference, during which he said his group will no longer negotiate with police because after Monday, "they cannot be trusted."

"I asked my dad to come down and walk with me," he said, "and he refused, saying he'd seen all the police officers, that getting arrested is a young man's game, one he didn't need."

"I do it for my conscience," he said of the sparse number of protesters. "I don't need a crowd with me. But I'll tell you, I am very proud of the people who have shown the courage to come out and march. They should be applauded. Instead, they are being arrested."

Sunsara Taylor, a spokesperson for the World Can't Wait group who was in the park Tuesday when the midday arrests occurred, voiced what everyone who was there agreed upon: The arrests were unneeded.

"They're here to scare us," she said. "What they are doing, it is working."

Indeed, it is.

It was just after 4 p.m. when I pulled up my bicycle to the Food Not Bombs tables in Civic Center where workers everyday feed the homeless.

It was the trigger point of Monday's mass arrests.

A few yards away, a squad of riot police stood. You could practically bathe in the unease.

God bless America.

Please.