Police Officers Tell of Combating Chaos

Student voices sound the loudest in Harvard's memories of 1969--so loud that some might forget they were not the only people in the Yard that day.

But another side of the events of April 1969 was seen by the 400 state troopers and police called in from surrounding towns.

Many simply showed up for work one afternoon and were ordered to Harvard Square. And while not all of the officers actually helped clear University Hall of protestors, all were involved in controlling crowds and keeping the peace.

Don A. Caliguri, now Somerville police chief, and Bernie J. Doherty, a Somerville police officer, were both Somerville officers at the time of the riots.

They worked the day of the takeover as well as several days afterward to control the masses thronging around the Square and the Yard.

Their recollections--of superiors shouting for police to fire on demonstrators and of other officers injured while trying to control the crowds--give a view of the "other side" of April 1969, usually ignored when Harvard retells the story.

In the Thick of Things

The student takeover began April 9, 1969 and the bust took place early in the morning of April 10. But demonstrations and counter-demonstrations spurred by the takeover filled the Square before the bust and for several days afterward.

And so police were required to do crowd control even before University Hall was cleared. One of those doing crowd control April 9 was Doherty, who was a part of Somerville police's Tactical Police Force (TPF), a unit specially trained in riot control.

Doherty, a Korean War veteran who was 30 at the time, began the day at the old police station in Somerville's Washington Square. His shift ran from 4 p.m. to 1 a.m.

"They told us to get dressed and get over there," he recalls. "They brought us in from all over the state. We were wearing all different types of uniforms."

The TPF officers were equipped with riot gear, including acid-proof black coveralls, helmets, masks, shields, and a baton.

After suiting up, Doherty remembers being bussed to the Square along with his fellow officers, where they found a chaotic scene. The sheer numbers of protestors had thrown the Square into utter confusion by the time he and other TPF officers arrived on the scene, he says.

"There were, I'd say, a couple of thousand people, without exaggeration," Doherty says. "There were a lot of windows broken in Harvard Square. There was a car burning."

"If I'm not mistaken, I think the Black Panthers were there," he adds. There was somebody, I think it was the Black Panthers, up on the kiosk...with their loudspeakers and their boom boxes and whatever. They were egging everybody on."

Doherty says he and other members of the TPF were told by their superiors to use their numbers to subdue the crowds of demonstrators in the Square.

"Whoever the commander was at the time told us to move around from one spot to another," he says. "We were in a wedge formation, to divide, to break [demonstrators] up into a smaller group."

Some of the protestors reacted violently towards the officers, Doherty recalls.

"They were throwing bottles and different types of missiles from their windows in Harvard," he says. "There was a police officer to my left, and the protestors came up to him and kicked him in the groin and he went down, so another police officer went up and took the spot in the formation."

"The guy to my right, I remember he got hit in the face with a brick," Doherty adds. "The shield shattered, so they took him out and another guy took his place. We just kept moving and dividing them."

When asked about the excessive police brutality that is explicitly detailed in so many accounts of the 1969 riots, Doherty says he never saw any firsthand, "but there probably was, I wouldn't be surprised."

"We use whatever force is necessary, but we don't go out of our way to annihilate anybody or physically beat them," he says. "We just have to keep moving, that's all."

"I'm sure the police officers [who cleared the building] were angry. I know I was," he adds.

Doherty says the officers found it necessary to use the baton which was part of their riot gear. He says this club was used "to keep the crowds moving."

"They were trying to get in between us. We had to keep moving. If they get in, they break the formation," he says. "We just kept coming, forcing them out."

But for all the specialized gear and tactical training, Doherty says that from his perspective at the time, "I didn't think we were successful at all. But I couldn't account for the other police departments. I know that we were separating them, then we moved someplace else, then we'd come back and start again."

The apparent failure of that first day was to recur.

"I was there, I don't know, for two or three days. They were long and frustrating days, tiring days," he admits. "It seemed like the crowd was approximately the same size each day. I don't know where they all came from, but it seemed like it never dwindled."

Nonetheless, Doherty says he and his fellow officers remained intent on their orders and in formation, trying to ignore the comments of the protestors.

"We were just focused on the group ahead of us, not what was coming from behind us," he says. "Your mission is to look in front of you, not behind you, you have people marching at your left, right, front and back."

Keeping cool was made difficult, he continues, by the provocative statements the rioters continued to hurl at the officers' ears.

"They were talking about the Vietnam War. They were coming right up to us, right up to our faces, and we had to keep moving, shuffling," Doherty says.

"Oh, they were calling us all kinds of names," he adds. "'Baby killers.' 'Get out of Vietnam.' 'Not our war.' 'Too many Americans dying over there.' I said I was in Korea. If they'd sent me to Vietnam, I'd go."

Hanging Tough

In 1969, Caliguri was in his first year on the force, a 25-year-old who had seen combat in Vietnam.

He also remembers getting orders to go to Harvard Square April 9.

"I had come to work for regular duty, which was 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. at that time, and we were then told that there were some problems occurring in Cambridge," he says.

Not a member of the TPF, Caliguri spent most of the day as an observer. He and other patrollers were brought in as a "show of force" and spent most of April 9 standing on Mass. Ave.

"We were additional people to support these tactical units. They were kind of special units, and they were equipped in different ways than we were," he says.

The regular patrollers, on the other hand, were given military helmet liners and weapons, primarily shotguns, Caliguri explains.

As both TPF and patrollers were bussed into Cambridge, Caliguri recalls, the officers were told that there was rioting that needed to be kept under control and that Harvard students were destroying property.

Caliguri says he remembers being informed that the students were damaging businesses, that cars were being overturned and that the Cambridge police could not control it.

Aside from that knowledge, Caliguri says, "We didn't know what to expect. We'd only heard about it in vague terms."

When he and his fellow patrollers arrived in the Square, he says, "They stationed us in a certain spot which was in front of the Harvard Square theater."

He says the police could see students leaning out of the windows of Yard buildings across Mass. Ave.

"And I was in that line looking right across at students who were, some of them, throwing rocks at us, and chanting and yelling things about the government's involvement in Vietnam," he says.

Caliguri says the patrollers seemed frustrated by their seeming inability to quiet the crowds.

"We just stood our ground, and there were remarks from some superiors later that were absolutely crazy at the time," he says.

"You know, I had a shotgun in my hand, and when they were throwing the rocks, I recall a sergeant, who's now retired, saying to me, 'Shoot the sons of bitches.' And I said to myself, 'There's no way I'm shooting anybody,"' Caliguri says. "And the shotgun stayed right there. I don't think he meant it."

"I think it was that sort of a thing when the rocks were coming our way and all that stuff," he says.

In addition to throwing rocks and other objects, Caliguri remembers, the rioters were yelling.

"Pigs was the popular term then," he says. [They were] yelling pigs this or pigs that. It didn't seem to affect anybody. It certainly didn't affect me."

Caliguri's unit never moved from its position.

Neither Doherty nor Caliguri was present at the time of the takeover--their shifts ended at 1 a.m.--but Doherty says he heard later from the Cambridge police that the crowd control efforts had been successful overall.

Other than that, he says, "I don't know what happened. That was the end of it. I remember the protestors were taken away, put in buses, and I was told they were arraigned in Cambridge, but I never found out what the outcome was."

Looking Back

Caliguri says at the time he did not question his assignment to maintain order amidst the rowdy crowd, despite the personal relevance of Vietnam to him.

"I [was] a younger, unsophisticated individual at the time when I went to Vietnam.I never asked why," he continues.

"But when I began to compare why [the riot] washappening, it just gave me a different outlookdown the road. I began to think, should we havebeen [in Vietnam]? Why is there this view aboutwhy we shouldn't have been there?" he said.

About the rioting and the officers'instructions to quiet the protestors, Caligurisays, "I don't really think you're giving it a lotof thought [at the time]. You just think that theysent you over there to keep order mostimmediately."

He adds, "But I can tell you that reflectingupon it afterwards, when I came home."

"[I thought to myself], I was just in Vietnam ayear and a half ago, and here I am over hereserving the city now as I served the governmentthen, and people here were against it," he says.

Doherty says he remembers Caliguri telling himthat fighting against the bedlam in the Squareprovoked memories of combat in the war which hehad just left.

"He said that he couldn't believe he had comefrom Vietnam and that fighting over there to this,to the fighting right here in the city and townwhere he was born and brought up in," Dohertysays.

Asked if he resented the students forprotesting a war so many of his friends andcolleagues had fought in, Doherty says absolutelynot.

"Resent them? No. Why should I resent them?" hesays.

He explains, "A lot of the people I grew upwith at that time were all veterans. There were alot of people in that protest who were there andthey didn't know what they were there for. Theywere just being a part of it."

Unlike Caliguri, Doherty says he has not hadsecond thoughts about his participation on the"other side" of Harvard Square's student riots.

"I don't know who was right and who was wrong,"he says. "I'm a soldier and a police officer and Ido what I'm told.

"But when I began to compare why [the riot] washappening, it just gave me a different outlookdown the road. I began to think, should we havebeen [in Vietnam]? Why is there this view aboutwhy we shouldn't have been there?" he said.

About the rioting and the officers'instructions to quiet the protestors, Caligurisays, "I don't really think you're giving it a lotof thought [at the time]. You just think that theysent you over there to keep order mostimmediately."

He adds, "But I can tell you that reflectingupon it afterwards, when I came home."

"[I thought to myself], I was just in Vietnam ayear and a half ago, and here I am over hereserving the city now as I served the governmentthen, and people here were against it," he says.

Doherty says he remembers Caliguri telling himthat fighting against the bedlam in the Squareprovoked memories of combat in the war which hehad just left.

"He said that he couldn't believe he had comefrom Vietnam and that fighting over there to this,to the fighting right here in the city and townwhere he was born and brought up in," Dohertysays.

Asked if he resented the students forprotesting a war so many of his friends andcolleagues had fought in, Doherty says absolutelynot.

"Resent them? No. Why should I resent them?" hesays.

He explains, "A lot of the people I grew upwith at that time were all veterans. There were alot of people in that protest who were there andthey didn't know what they were there for. Theywere just being a part of it."

Unlike Caliguri, Doherty says he has not hadsecond thoughts about his participation on the"other side" of Harvard Square's student riots.

"I don't know who was right and who was wrong,"he says. "I'm a soldier and a police officer and Ido what I'm told.