Two Vastopolis Officers Hurt In Convention Protest Violence
May 07, 2011
Vastopolis -- A scuffle broke out Saturday during a protest over welfare cuts two miles from the site of the Democratic convention. Two police officers were slightly hurt and 22 demonstrators were arrested. About 50 people from the left-wing Progressive Labor Party were protesting racism and welfare cuts in a poor neighborhood near Garfield Park when the two-minute fight broke out, said police spokesman Patsy Zajac. Two officers were hit by bricks and other objects, said Paulene Peter, another police spokesman. The officers were treated for minor injuries at Vastopolis City Hospital Medical Center and released, nursing supervisor Ashely Hernandes said. Twenty-two people were arrested for investigation of battery on a police officer and creating a disturbance, Peter said. ``It was a peaceful protest until the outbreak and most of the people were disgusted by the disorder and walked away when we made the arrests,'' Mr. Peter said. Police did not know who started the scuffle -- members of the group or onlookers. Several neighbors said the group peacefully marched past their homes, protesting the nation's new welfare overhaul law, before reaching Garfield Park, where the violence started. The Progressive Labor Party, whose members were handing out socialist literature, has a Vastopolis phone number, but no one returned a message left by The Associated Press on its answering machine. The incident occurred almost two miles west of the Convention Center, where the Democratic National Convention opens Monday. Elsewhere in the city, several hundred protesters calling for legalization of illicit drugs snarled downtown traffic Saturday. Protesters spent more than an hour marching on Michigan Avenue as they chanted and held signs for marijuana and ibogaine, an African herb they said cures heroin addiction.
