Police Say Crowd Stopped Arrest

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32119, 15 October 1969, Page 15

Police Say Crowd Stopped Arrest

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) CHICAGO, Oct. 14. A plain-clothes policeman has testified that Thomas Hayden, a founder of Students for a Democratic Society, twice exhorted crowds to attempt to block his arrest during the 1968 Democratic national convention, U.P.I. reported.

An arrest of Hayden by the policeman, Frank Riggio, resulted in protest marches on a police station and the General John Legal statue in Grant Park.

Riggio’s testimony came yesterday after the jurors at a Federal conspiracy trial were permitted by the Court to view films of the marches, over defence objections. Riggio also testified that he heard another of the eight

defendants in the conspiracy trial, Abbot “Abbie” Hoffman, urge a crowd at the Logal statue on August 29, 1968, to abduct the Chicago Deputy Police Superintendent, James Rochford. Riggio said that on August 25, the day before the convention opened, he and his partner caught Hayden and Wolf Lowenthal—named as an unindicted co-conspirator—-letting the air out of the tyres of Riggio’s police car. When the two policemen attempted to arrest Hayden and Lowenthal, Riggio said the two shouted, “Help, help” don’t let them get us. Don’t let the police arrest us.” Riggio said that the angry Lincoln Park crowd surrounded them and that the police were unable to make an arrest

Riggio said that he and his partner again found Hayden and Lowenthal in Lincoln Park the next day, August 26, and arrested them.