Pittsburgh: Police in Pittsburgh have
arrested 66 people after a night of battles with protesters
who tried to march on a summit of the world's top leaders, the
FBI said in a statement on Friday.
Twenty-four people were arrested yesterday when groups of
die-hard youths refused to disperse when police used pepper
spray and fired bean bag rounds to break up an unauthorised
demonstration of around 1,000 protesters
Anarchists had attempted to march on the conference
centre hosting the Group of 20 summit of the world's leading
economies, which anti-capitalist activists regard as an
unaccountable group that ignores the world's poor.
A further 42 people were arrested when protests erupted
in Schenley Plaza near the University of Pittsburgh in the
evening, the statement said.
Three protesters and two police officers were injured or
suffered reactions to the chemical pepper spray that was fired
at the protesters by the police. One police officer was
treated for heat exhaustion.
At least 19 businesses had their windows or doors smashed
in. Many of them were in the Oakland neighbourhood, near the
university.
Most of the protesters who were arrested in the afternoon
were in their 20s, and at least one was a minor. Several of
the protesters refused to give their names and are listed in
the FBI statement as John or Jane Doe.
G20 police, protesters take to tweets
As the Group of 20 summit
of the world's leading economies went into its second and last
day, police and anti-G20 protesters took to the tweets.
Both have harnessed popular micro-blogging service
Twitter, the police using it to track the movements of
hardcore anti-G20 protesters and the demonstrators
to rally support for their anti-capitalist cause.
The protesters tweeted all day yesterday and into the
small hours of Friday, piecing together a snapshot of an
unfolding siege in the streets and parks of Pittsburgh as law
enforcement cracked down on young anti-G20 activists.
"Two more arrests, cops have blocked off student dorms,
using weapons," read a tweet posted on the G20pgh feed, set up
by the Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project, as police broke up a
demonstration near the University of Pittsburgh.
The tweets told protesters when a new shift of police was
coming on duty. They shouted out messages like: "RIOT POLICE
MARCH DOWN FORBES, SENDING STUDENTS SPRINTING TOWARD TOWERS.
TEAR GAS SHOT AT CROWD."
"They've been putting out, making up all sorts of
addresses and pieces of information, but any open source of
information out there is always a good tool," said Pittsburgh
police Sergeant Lavonnie Bickerstaff.
"Police scanner is onto group forming on Hot Metal
Bridge," read another tweet from the protesters.
An hour later it was followed by a mocking message, in
capital letters, that read: "SCANNER JUST SAID: BE ADVISED
WE'RE BEING MONITORED BY ANARCHISTS
THROUGH SCANNER."
Meanwhile, as hundreds of riot police held back the
protesters on the streets, others back at the Joint
Information Center were making like the protesters: they, too,
were tweeting.
"We're using Twitter as a monitoring tool, not to have
two-way conversations with the protesters," said Lieutenant
Sue Kerver of the US Coast Guard, one of several branches of
the security forces which are in Pittsburgh to beef up
security for the G20 summit.
"By us monitoring them and seeing what's happening at
street level, we can correlate that information with what we
have coming in from our folks," Kerver said.
During the daytime protests, a police helicopter hovered
high in the air above parts of neighbourhoods in northern
Pittsburgh, where a hardcore group of demonstrators were still
taking on the riot squads, hours after most of the marchers
had been dispersed when officers fired off pepper spray and
non-lethal rounds.
The G20 summit marked the first time the Pittsburgh
police has used Twitter "as a collaborative effort with other
agencies," said Bickerstaff, although the bureau uses it
regularly as part of routine intelligence gathering.
Bureau Report
First Published: Saturday, September 26, 2009, 00:10