September 24 Anti-War March in San Francisco: Black Bloc/Cop Standoff

These cops are paid $80,000 a year and up plus benefits to stand around, or sit in or on motorcycles, horses, vans and cars, all of which I saw in great numbers, wearing lots of expensive, worthless gear. This display of hundreds of thousands of dollars of thuggery represents a complete waste of our tax dollars and is sufficient cause to shut down the police department and transfer their budget to the social services, public transportation and medical care departments, all of which are experiencing severe cutbacks, and all of which we need.

As to the horse manure, it is outrageous that these pigs on horses did not have a city clean-up crew with them to clean up their mess as this manure on the streets certainly attracts flies which spread disease. There is, of course, no reason for pigs to be on horses for any kind of crowd control. Horses belong in Golden Gate Park, off road.

There was also no need for the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on the Democratic Party's police (the Democratic machine is the capitalist election fraud gang that runs San Francisco politics). There was absolutely no need for any police there whatsoever. The demonstration organizers protected the marchers from cars and from the fascist idiots, a dozen of them appearing at the edge of our rally at Jefferson Sq Park with American & Israeli flags, both of which are symbols of US oil imperialism, and the Democratic and Republican parties, both of which are staunch supporters of the US military base called Israel and of US oil imperialism.

The next time you see this array of thuggery, chant so all around you can hear and learn: "That's why we're so poor. You can't have guns and butter!"

80k ??.. LOL, maybe with absolutely no overtime (which is impossible because of Holidays), try well over 100k with just a little overtime (like demos)...LOL...LOL

for the 2 dozen arrests , that wasnt jay walking as stated we waited for the light to turn green and then the cops came down on us like wolves.

i look at that pic and really wonder about all the unmarked or minimal marked white vans and trucks, looks really messed up.

Those trucks are rental trucks for the various sausage stands at the top of the hill. What was the name of that group in Oakland that sells lots of pies at these events?
The passenger vans are owned by the police. Everyone looking a couple blocks over during the march saw the vans of police kept as resources in the area. I was discussing with a friend that we can't figure out what was happening during that July G8 march in the Mission when Greg Suhr suddenly took 90% of his crowd officers back to the station for 25 minutes, yet everyone still saw that there were 6 or 7 police on foot plus public works employees already cleaning up the tipped newsracks and trash as protesters regrouped and headed down Mission... so does that mean that they weren't phoning in to Commander Suhr or that there was some sort of wise plan behind this? ... but typically when they're not acting all weird, there is a central commander and a few sub commanders, and the individual officers aren't in 'patrol mode', but instead are receiving instructions. A bunch of them will be directed to be in the wings. What is really interesting is during the past three years, how many times ANSWER march enthusiasts have observed huge numbers of police in platoons on foot, van, motorbike, and horse, numbering in the hundreds, *yet* quite dramatic incidents of vandalism to items sitting on the sidewalk and building windows plus street reclamation for walkers have erupted without arrest.
I think that they have a tradeoff of letting individual officers who can see what's happening all decide to proceed on their own, where they could easily get hurt or interrupt each other's progress, versus having the centralized command where they have to wait for several minutes lag for the guy in charge to receive information and decide what he's going to do. This results in unsensible decisionmaking to just arrest everyone on the street about 20 minutes after one or two individuals tipped trashcans. For instance, few arrests at this despite all sorts of jaywalking and some sign defacing, although this is a *lot* of people. Why are there so many fewer at these black bloc anniversary events? http://www.indybay.org/news/2003/02/1574666_comment.php
three arrests of completely unrelated people at this, with a big lag in police presence despite about 250 officers a few blocks away. http://www.indybay.org/news/2003/01/1562227_comment.php