A Different Kind of Police Work

Many of the 400 police officers who marched into University Hall on the morning of April 10, 1969, were facing a totally new experience.

The Cambridge police officers had never had to break an student demonstration before. They had only been trained to apprehend criminals.

But they had no choice.

"The city had to respond to [Harvard's] request, just as we would have had to respond if someone had called up and said 'Look, there are six people in my living room. They don't belong there and I want them out,'" says former City Manager James L. Sullivan.

The violence reported at the scene of the April 10 raid is legendary. According to The Crimson, the officers beat students with billy clubs, in many cases causing scalp wounds and facial cuts. Spectators and members of the press were arrested, and students were threatened.

Several officers from Somerville wore no badges during the raid.

Some officers, who knew what was coming, apparently tried to get out of the raid.

"There was a cop who lived in this project where I live who just called in sick and said some of his friends had called in sick and that they wouldn't go for it," says William B. Cunningham, a community activist.

"Everybody learned something from that incident," says Capt. Henry P. Gallagher of the Cambridge Police department. "We hadn't had anything like it in the immediate past."

As a police sergeant, Gallagher was part of the contingent of Cambridge officers at University Hall. Later, he was placed in charge of a newlyformed tactical squad of officers specially trained to deal with angry crowds and protesters.

The tactical squad, formed in response to the problems police encountered at University Hall, was responsible for preventing the outbreak of violence at several later demonstrations in the city, Gallagher says.

At the invitation of Law School Dean James Vorenberg '49, then a professor of Law, Gallagher also received a fellowship that enabled him to study at the Law School for a year to improve his understanding of police operations.

But despite the need for new training and a new police division, Gallagher says that given the situation in University Hall in 1969, the majority of the officers handled the situation well.

"At the time, I recall there were some officers alleging they had been kicked and bitten," he says. You had force with force in there, but the arrests were made and the building was cleared."

"We had to go in and take them out and that's exactly what we did," he adds.