As outrage grew over the death of Elijah McClain, protesters began to gather at the palatial Aurora Municipal Building. Saturday, June 27 brought a pretty sizable gathering that was organized by a group of teenagers, some still in high school. I don't know who they were but they were able to bring a pretty large crowd to the march. I presume the event was promoted across the social media of many high schoolers in the Denver-Aurora. I saw many young protesters in the afternoon.
APD had published a number of warnings to the general public and apparently when they learned that the march was organized by some pretty young kids, they reached out to threaten their parents with liability for damage potentially done during the protest. Nice.
While organizers gave speeches near the municipal center, a crowd had gathered in front of the APD Headquarters building. There was a wall of police, pretty much standing there getting verbally abused by a pretty rowdy crowd. There was a fence and the police we well back behind it.
The march went out and back on Chambers and as the group of 1000 or more was reflective of the large marches in Denver, where there was a highly diverse crowd.
As the crowd got closer to the municipal center the organizers ended the march and sent everyone home before arriving back at the center. Nice move they took for everyone's safety and they probably avoid the liability too. These organizers were pretty impressive kids.
I took this as a queue to hightail it back the the muni center and police HQ and off I went.
Back there I found the same crowd of a 150 or so still yelling at the cops. The cops had moved up and the crowd was a bit louder.
The orange shotgun is a "less lethal" mini bean bag shooting shotgun.
The crowd was pretty rowdy and there were a few fireworks thrown over the fence.
As this was all going down an acoustic violin concert was set to begin near sunset.
Dozens of violinists were arriving as were people coming to hear the concert and honor Elijah McClain. It was literally people with lawn chairs coming to hear music.
I am not sure the police knew about the concert but they eventually got tired of the insults and as dusk was approaching they declared it an illegal assembly and issued an "order of dispersal."
So against 150-200 rowdies and about a 100 concert participants, the APD made its move.
The crowd dispersed as soon as the police move and was pretty much spread out and all the police really needed to do was just walk a picket line. On the opposite side of the park from where I was, the police moved through a live violin concert and shut it down.
This is who they sent to break up a concert of some violinists.....
I can't say it was a very good look for APD.
The police were aiming to move the crowd out of the park and onto Alameda where it is likely they would be sufficiently dispersed and people would leave. This was pretty much under way when I circled around the back of the protest to head over where the violinists were.
On the way in the parking lot I found the most awesome thing.
As I got to the parking lot on the south side of the park, I found this guy. His name is Jeff Hughes – the Maestro.
He was setting up a sound system and had a generator in the back of his pickup truck. It was just he and his lady friend. I told him to hurry because the cops were literally like less than 100 feet away and moving forward quite aggressively.
I thought he was gonna set up the sound system and play Fuck tha Police. Well, the Maestro has greater ambition than that…..how petty I felt as I saw him perform.
As the police were moving in a line about 40 feet away they were definitely intent on moving the crowd through the parking lot. The curb beds has nice hand sized rocks in them and they had already called out the fact that some people had picked up rocks earlier in the evening. There is no way they wanted to let the crowd spend too much time around the rocks. But then the Maestro Hughes weighed in.....but not with NWA.
Cops were literally stopped and the crowd and the cops began to watch this guy. Other violinists from the acoustic concerto came over and played along.....
And of course my phone battery and back up were dying....so I was filming in clips.
A few words about APD on this day.....
I’d say in general that the Aurora PD tonight pretty much tried to temper their response for the most part. They carried clubs and used them to push protesters. I did not see them two hand anyone. But subsequently I have seen video, taken no more than 100 feet from where I was that clearly showed a cop swinging his 4 foot baton. I did not see them hit anyone else but it's likely to have happened. Did not see any serious protester injuries, but then again, things happen quickly. The worst was pepper spray in the face for a few. Cops just walked in a picket line and people moved back. They were liberal with pepper spray.
Regarding tear gas, I don't think the grenades I saw go off were tear gas, although I was upwind. Crowd didn't react like it was and it was gone quickly.
I think Aurora PD was trying to be reserved with how they reacted. They certainly could have come with more and bigger. Denver hit the crowd much harder a month earlier. And the crowd was much tougher in Denver. Which is why, for all the misguided APD effort to go easy, the whole response on this day was a failure. It made them look exactly like what many fear or think they are.
Seriously, to not be able to for-see the optics of riot goons busting up a group of violinists shows just how unable they are to see what is so obvious to the rest of us.
There is no shortage of explanations for this, but the fact remains, it was a bad move and they looked like idiots.
I don’t even know what to say about this picture. But here I am. Posting it anyway. I kinda feel bad for body shaming, but seriously, isn’t this the bass player from Gwar?
I'll just keep adding to this post. Aurora does not have a permanent chief of police. There is a search underway apparently. I am really wondering how that first meeting goes when the new chief asks what they were thinking sending this guy in to break up a bunch of nerdy violinists trying to honor a young man who died at the hands of APD.
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