Union Leader Reports on Manch Mass Arrests

by | Jun 5, 2011 | 0 comments

Manchester’s first ever mass-arrests of liberty activists makes the Union Leader:

MANCHESTER — Protesters wrote anti-police slogans with chalk on the city’s police station Saturday, leading to eight arrests, police said. The fire department hours later hosed off the colored chalk that police considered graffiti.

The arrests — including those of three people who gave out-of-state addresses to authorities — came a day after some of the same people followed police on patrols Friday night and filmed them making traffic stops.

“They’ve been ratcheting things up here,” Sgt. Todd Boucher said Saturday night. “They crossed the line when they started writing all over the building.”

One of those arrested, Neal Conner, 24, of 6 Freses Pond Road, Deerfield, said Saturday’s protest was promoted on Facebook. Police said people associated with the Free State movement were involved. Conner declined to say who organized the protest, but a website, copblock.org, was written in chalk, and Conner presented one of its business cards. The website monitors police activities and sells T-shirts with slogans such as “I Don’t Talk to Police, I Record Them.”

Conner said Manchester police should be expecting future protests.

“The police will be hearing from us,” he said outside the station after his release from custody. (more…)