Berkeley officials: Protesters well-armed
BERKELEY, Calif. — The so-called black bloc agitators who disrupted a conservative speech at UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza Wednesday arrived like a paramilitary force armed with bats, steel rods, fireworks and Molotov cocktails, officials say.
The scheduled appearance Wednesday of conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulos was still two hours away, but it was precisely the time that most local television stations were beginning their live 6 p.m. broadcasts. Within minutes, the group of 100 to 150 protesters had smashed half a dozen windows with barricades, launched fireworks at police and toppled a dieselpowered klieg light, which caused it to burst into flames.
“They didn’t come to lock arms and sing ‘ Kumbaya,’ ” said UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof.
Yiannopoulos vowed in a Facebook post after the riot, “I’m planning to return to Berkeley to give the speech I was prevented from delivering. Hopefully within the next few months. I’ll keep you posted.”
While so-called black bloc agitators have become a fixture of Bay Area demonstrations in the past decade, their appearance at Berkeley Wednesday threatens to inflame tensions in an already polarized nation. Moving officers into the melee would have created “a lethal, horror situation,” said campus police Chief Margo Bennett. “We have to do exactly what we did ... to show tremendous restraint.”
Berkeley officials are talking with law enforcement agencies about how to address black bloc tactics, which have become increasingly common in the United States in recent years. There was only one arrest Wednesday night, but Berkeley officials say the incident was something altogether new.
“We have never seen this on the Berkeley campus,” Mogulof said. “This was an unprecedented invasion.”