CHICAGO — There was no tear gas anywhere, and some of those who showed up for a reunion of Chicago police officers who worked during the 1968 Democratic National Convention hung up their badges — and their billy clubs — a long time ago.
But if this looked like just a gathering of retirees who came to knock back a few drinks and swap stories Friday night — “I was just looking to see who’s still alive,” joked retired patrolman Jeff Norris — it was much more than that.
Between men who almost spit out words like “scum” to describe demonstrators who descended on the city 41 years ago to the small crowd of protesters across the street, it was clear the days when the streets became a battlefield remain one of the most divisive chapters in Chicago history.
From the former cops came recollections about what the world didn’t see on television, along with images of police wading into crowds of protesters, knocking them down and bloodying them with billy clubs.
They told of bags of urine and feces, and bricks that were thrown at them, the heavy glass ashtrays dropped on them from hotel windows high above, the nail-spiked rubber balls left behind their car tires.
And they dismissed any talk of a “police riot,” as a commission famously called the scene, speaking with pride about how they conducted themselves.
“We were doing what we were supposed to do,” said John Murray, a 62-year-old retired detective. “No regrets.”
On the other side of the street, protesters say all this talk about doing their job and putting the blame for the rioting on the demonstrators amounts to a whitewash of history.
That is obvious, they say, by the reunion organizers who did not just promote the gathering on a website called , but promoted it as a way to honor those who protected the city from “Marxist street thugs.”
