By Kirk Ross
There are a lot of questions left in the wake of the raid on Joe Riddle Jr.’s real estate holding on West Franklin Street. The first, no doubt uttered by many of us when we first saw the photo of police in riot gear brandishing automatic weapons on the storied sidewalks of our lovely downtown, can be abbreviated with the letters W, T and F.
Without the image, the raid on people who took over a private building would have been another in a series of confrontations with our local anarchists, who seem convinced that they have a right to damage property in support of their cause.
With the image, which shows a rather fearsome-looking weapon being pointed at unarmed protesters, it is hard for anyone with a history in this town to come away feeling that the amount of force depicted was appropriate.
As Chapel Hill has grown from a sleepy little college town to a slightly less sleepy mid-sized college town, one thing hasn’t changed: It still doesn’t do very well when it comes to mass arrests.
In the civil rights era, Chief William Blake’s force, occasionally supplemented by Orange County deputies and the N.C. Highway Patrol, had a heck of a time corralling ever-increasing protests. Equipment needs, overtime pay and injuries to police officers hauling away protesters were quietly a factor in the town’s debate over a public-accommodations ordinance.
I spent a little time in the back of the Chapel Hill paddy wagon used during those arrests, not because of any act of civil disobedience, but because one of my band-mates bought the thing – an old Ford – at an auction and we used to drive it to gigs. Except for its vintage status and odd history, it was not a particularly impressive or intimidating vehicle.
In the past couple of decades, the force has gotten a better set of gear and learned a good deal about tactics. That was certainly on display in 1996 when the department raided what had become an open-air crack market on Graham Street. One Saturday afternoon, officers packed into the back of a big-box rental truck, which pulled into the delivery area of a motorcycle shop located at about mid-block. They poured out of the van and arrested just about everyone they could get their hands on. They found some drugs and weapons, but in doing so broke a few principles embodied in the U.S. Constitution. The charges got tossed, and what was intended to be a major step toward taking back areas ruled by crack dealers turned into a public embarrassment. The town paid out about $200,000 to settle lawsuits that resulted.
This latest attempt to arrest a large group of people has proved to be another incident where the tactics employed, rather than the reason for the arrests, will overwhelm the discussion.
The debate is now not about whether the raid was justified, or even about the contention that at some point a property owner has an obligation to either put a key downtown property to use or get up off it. That’s a shame, because we do have places downtown that have gone to rot and ought to be put to use. On that, the position of the anarchists and town leaders are not that far apart. A little patience and an attempt at dialogue might have resulted in a different outcome. Instead, as a friend of mine put it, the town went in hot.
To those of us who live here, the escalation of tactics by the anarchists, particularly the mini-riot at Greenbridge a couple months back, makes the police response at Riddle’s place seem slightly more rational.
But to outsiders, the distinction between those occupying Peace & Justice Plaza on East Franklin and those trespassing at the old Chrysler dealership is not as clear.
Chapel Hill, which had been accommodating, if not downright friendly, to the Occupy movement, now joins the list of other cities that have dealt harshly with protesters and press people. The anarchists got exactly what they wanted – publicity and persecution. The town got exactly what it didn’t want. The most shared story about downtown Chapel Hill is not so flattering, and people around the country are saying nasty things about us.
There’s no Kevlar for that.