Panic on Hartford's Streets….

By Chris Harris
Published 11/01/01, Hartford, CT

Vittorio Lancia has been trying in earnest not to sneeze, cough, or laugh since last Thursday. Doing any of these things sends a shot of excruciating pain up the length of his body, thanks to the cracked rib he received last week, compliments of the Hartford police department.

It took three of Hartford's finest to pin Lancia to the sidewalk outside One Constitution Plaza. Lancia, a 61-year-old Vietnam Veteran and Central Connecticut Green Party organizer from Portland, took to the streets of Hartford with about 300 other protesters from around the state, mostly students from UCONN, Central Connecticut State University, Yale and Wesleyan, in opposition to United States military actions in Afghanistan.

The demonstration, this past Thursday around 4:30 p.m. in Bushnell Park, was directed at the current military actions.  The group had several speakers who delivered prepared speeches and jocose skits depicting a battle “royale” between an Osama bin Laden-like character and Uncle Sam. It ended shortly after 6 p.m. on Market Street with pepper spray, brutal beatings and the arrests of 18 people, seven on charges of inciting to riot.

"We weren't rioting," says Lancia, the first person blasted with a burst of saffron-tinged Oleoresin Capsicum, or pepper spray, and one of the only protesters to sustain a serious injury during the course of his arrest. "We may have been disruptive to traffic; I guess you could call it civil disobedience. But, I would gladly have taken an arrest without the brutality."

Lancia was standing on the sidewalk, obeying police orders he says, when police instructed the crowd to go home. Lancia says he told them he had every right to stay on the sidewalk. Moments later, an officer's knee was planted firmly against the back of his neck, the left side of his pepper spray-sprinkled face was pressed hard against the ground, and a teary-eyed Lancia was desperately screaming out, "I have asthma."

"I was busted when I was on the sidewalk, and I was busted when I said I had the right to be on the sidewalk," says Lancia, who's consulting a lawyer, and considering civil action against the department and the city. "I certainly do think they acted illegally towards me, because they were the ones who started acting violently."

Lancia's not the only one who feels the police may have acted illegally. Many lawyers and city officials are questioning the excessive use of force against the protesters.

"From what I've heard, yes, the actions by the police were illegal," says Norm Pattis, a New Haven defense lawyer representing two Yale students arrested during the demonstration. "The cops were so offended by the protest, the message, that they picked a fight. And when the kids defended themselves, the cops called it inciting to riot. It seems the police overreacted."

Leon Rosenblatt, a West Hartford labor lawyer, watched the madness unfold. "The pepper spray was uncalled for, because there were no threats of violence," says Rosenblatt. "The charges were trumped-up charges, for the purpose of attacking not the demonstrators' conduct but their speech."

"I have been on a fact-finding mission," says Councilwoman Elizabeth Horton-Sheff, a Green who knows Lancia personally. "I want to know what went down and how we can prevent this from ever happening again in this community.

"When it shakes down, I think we'll find that both sides did a little something wrong and it escalated to an unpleasant scenario," she adds. "I think this all could have been avoided."

Several of the protesters arrested last week have contacted the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union with complaints, according to its director, Teresa Younger.

Lt. Neil Dryfe, the police department's mouthpiece, says Hartford officers undergo training on a regular basis in preparation for situations such as these. Dryfe defended the officers' actions and doesn't quite understand why so many are crying foul.

"When you break the law, there are consequences," Dryfe says. "I don't understand why there's this sense of bewilderment."

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