Updated below: Chief Schirling retracts statement, apologizes for mistake.
Does this photograph show a protester from Sunday’s clash with Burlington police grabbing a cop’s baton?
Burlington Police Chief Michael Schirling said on Vermont Public Radio’s “Vermont Edition” today that the photo — snapped by Dylan Kelley and posted online at Seven Days — “clearly” shows the demonstrator in the black bandana grabbing the baton of police Lt. Art Cyr.
“What I see in the photograph, they have a hold of it,” Schirling told VPR host Steve Zind. “They are clearly resisting and you can clearly see in the left of the photo, a man in a black bandana grabbed hold of Lt. Cyr’s baton, and that is what precipated the first event.”
Activists and cops have traded accusations about who’s to blame for the incident in which police fired “stingball pellets” into a crowd of demonstrators blocking a bus of dignitaries from leaving a conference of New England governors and eastern Canadian premiers. The tension gave way to a moment of cooperation yesterday when demonstrators and their lawyer called for a dialogue with police about the events that led to the clash.
After hearing Schirling’s remarks on VPR, the photographer who took the picture said he was “livid,” calling Schirling’s claim “an absolute lie.”
“If you look at the picture, it clearly illustrates that that person’s hand is not wrapped around the baton,” said Dylan Kelley, who has photographed occupy protests around the country. “It is wrapped around a flag or banner or something else. If you zoom in on that lower left hand corner of the frame, and you look at that person’s hand, it is not wrapped around the baton.”
Kelley, who said he was at most four feet away from Cyr, sent Seven Days higher-resolution version of the photograph, which we zoomed in on and cropped to publish here. From the photograph, it’s difficult to say what the bandana-clad protester is clutching, and Schirling was not immediately available Thursday afternoon to respond to Kelley’s comments.
Update – 4 p.m.
Upon viewing the close-up of the photograph, Chief Schirling has retracted his earlier statement made on Vermont Public Radio. In a statement emailed to Seven Days and VPR Thursday afternoon, Schirling said:
“On the show earlier today I described a photograph from the 7 Days website that was given to us this morning as showing a man grabbing an officer’s baton. A few moments ago 7 Days emailed us a much higher resolution enhanced version of the photograph. Upon examination of this new photograph we realize it is not the baton. We will work during our investigation and ‘after action’ review to try to determine what it is. Our assessment of this portion of the event was based solely on the photograph available earlier in the day. I want to be sure we set the record straight as quickly as possible as new information comes to light. I apologize for the error. We continue to ask that anyone with information about this incident, video, photographic, or otherwise, contact us so we may be as thorough as possible.”
This article appears in Aug 1-7, 2012.
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To expect the bus driver to proceed and nudge them out of the way is not reasonable. That is what law enforcement is for….like it or not. Otherwise is vigilantism. Law enforcement gets a microscope when things don’t go smoothly, but otherwise taken for granted.
Violence is a tricky word. Violating an individual’s ability to go
about their business would be included in that. That bus driver had a
right to pass. Freedom of speech gives them the right to yell at them
as the bus passes, but the law was broken when they blocked the drive.
I think that “join the lawlessness and attack the protesters” is an
unfortunate characterization of what happened.
I don’t think that
arresting one of the protesters would make any of them go away. Mob
mentality is a difficult part of free democracy. It looks like they dealt with it
best as they could. Like I said, the images are not comfortable, but
those were the tools they were given. It is pretty clear from the vids,
that the helmet-free, bare-handed cop did ask them to move. Then he
offered the group a shove. Perhaps he was a little optimistic that that
would do the trick, but it seemed like the next step. The cops did not just show up and start “assaulting” protesters.
Nobody was being ordered to stop exercising their right to free speech. They were simply being ordered to not impede traffic while doing so. The cops should have just stepped out of the way and told the bus driver to proceed.
That is simply untrue. Where did you come by the incorrect idea that the ONLY legal thing police can do with a lawbreaker is arrest him or her? Did you study criminal law in law school? Police CAN use force to stop lawbreaking behavior. Moreover, what happens when the person resists arrest? Are you saying the police can’t use physical force in carrtying out their duties? Uninformed nonsense. Moreover, arrests do not have to be immediate. Police absolutely have the right to resort to physical force to stop lawbreaking behavior and make arrests later.
And I hope they do. I hope they arrest everyone who they can identify as having blocked the street and not complied with the order to move. But they won’t, because they know that’s exactly what the hooligans want — more publicity.
Uninformed again.
They tried to arrest one. He resisted, and another protester then grabbed the cop in an attempt to get the first guy release. The two protesters ended up dragging the cop down the street. You call that non-violent resistance? You call that allowing themselves to be arrested? Not hardly.
“but if there are cops that acted improperly, they need to be publicly held accountable.”
The first and only people who broke the law were hooligans who blocked a public street without ever getting a permit. I don’t hear you howling for them to be “held accountable.”
Hoo, I don’t think the protesters have the sort of criminal genius that you are giving them credit for, or that the cops are so incompetent that they could be tricked into breaking the law like that. When faced with nonviolent protesters that are breaking the law, the police have two options, follow the law and arrest the protesters that are breaking the law, or join the lawlessness and attack the protesters. In Burlington, the police purposefully chose the latter, they chose Violence, and in doing so, they are as accountable for their actions as any other citizen. The police do not have the right to chose violence against non violent citizens. They do not have the right to fire weapons at unarmed non-violent people.
All the commanding officer had to do was stop playing peekaboo with the protesters and arrest one. Do you really think the protesters would have stuck around once they realized that the cops 1) mean business, and 2) cannot be tricked into breaking the law themselves? Gimme a break, on the one hand you pro-police state folks say the protesters are just a bunch of unwashed criminal hippy crybabies, then on the other hand you say they outsmarted the police…
Instead, after playing games, he and the other officers seem to have decided to shirk their duty to uphold the law, and ‘give them what they deserved’. This is not acceptable police behavior. This is why there NEEDS to be an independent investigation. IF it clears the cops, great, but if there are cops that acted improperly, they need to be publicly held accountable. The BPD has proven through their statements that they are not interested in the facts, and that is why there needs to be an outside probe into this matter.