Protesters set up for a long night outside the Belmont and Western police station in Roscoe Village on Tuesday, where a steady stream of police squadrols arrived at intervals starting around 10 p.m., delivering arrestees from the pro-Palestinian protest that began at the Israeli consulate downtown.
The protesters walked directly into a large group of police officials, four officers deep, around 7:30 p.m. on Madison Street. The officers began to push them the other way and yelled, “Move back, move back.” Scuffles began to break out, and officers wearing helmets moved into the crowd.
A spokesman for the National Lawyers Guild said that nearly 70 people had been arrested as of 9 p.m.
Late Tuesday evening, about two dozen people sat beside a pile of snacks, bottled water and blankets, on a narrow strip of grass along Western Avenue outside the police station, talking and only looking up when squadrols rolled past on their way to a rear entrance.
Alexis Oiler, 32, said her partner was arrested on suspicion of failure to disperse, but she said he had been shouting at police officers from behind a tape line where police had instructed them to move.
“Police had been giving orders to disperse the whole time we were down there,” said Oiler, who is visiting Chicago from Ohio.
“They wouldn’t let us leave, and that [area behind the tape] was where they told us we could stand.
“The mass arrests,” Oiler said, “seemed like overkill. This was a small group of people. They didn’t go anywhere. They didn’t do anything. They weren’t breaking anything,” said Oiler, who previously lived in Chicago.
“I think Chicago wasted a lot of taxpayer dollars over-policing the city for the DNC, and if nothing happened, then I guess it looks like a waste of money.”
Oiler left after a lawyer at the station told her that her partner would probably spend several hours being processed.
“I’m not worried about him. He’ll be fine,” she said. “I’m worried about my friends in Palestine.”
The entryway at the back of the station left a wrought iron fence and a good 50 yards of parking lot between supporters and the arrested protesters.
Each vehicle held only four or five arrestees.
As of 10 p.m. the charges detainees were facing were not known.
Misdemeanor defendants were expected to be processed and released within hours, but some of the protesters arrested during Sunday’s demonstration were not released until Monday.