During the main rally, the police did not keep the factions apart, and officers were stationed around the protesters, but not in the crowd, where they could have responded to incidents more quickly. At first they did not have riot gear with them — as violence escalated, officers had to leave to retrieve the equipment from staging areas blocks away.
When the police finally moved in, forcing the crowd out of the park and onto city streets, the violence worsened. “When violence was most prevalent, C.P.D. commanders pulled officers back to a protected area of the park, where they remained for over an hour as people in the large crowd fought on Market Street,” the report said.
'via Blog this'