  Summertime1 Member Username: Summertime1 Post Number: 8 Registered: 01-2008 |
It was July 1972, it was horrible | ||
Yooper Member Username: Yooper Post Number: 114 Registered: 12-2006 |
Sounds crazy! | ||
Chris_rohn Member Username: Chris_rohn Post Number: 394 Registered: 04-2005 |
I'm not old enough. | ||
Kingofdetroit Member Username: Kingofdetroit Post Number: 66 Registered: 10-2006 |
Got pics? | ||
Jokerman Member Username: Jokerman Post Number: 110 Registered: 07-2005 |
Yes, I was there. It was wild. Groups of kids had been partying there for many nights in a row. It was like a mini-Woodstock every night, lots of drinking and smoking herb. I guess the cops finally had enough, because one night they came in swinging billy clubs. It looked like a smaller version of the cop riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968. My friends and I luckily got away without being hurt. However, I saw many kids beaten by the cops. They seemed to be just hitting people and arresting them at random, even young teenage girls. | ||
Paulmcall Member Username: Paulmcall Post Number: 557 Registered: 05-2004 |
Funny how they never show those videos on COPS or such programs. | ||
Mackinaw Member Username: Mackinaw Post Number: 4394 Registered: 02-2005 |
Hmm, Balduck Park, really?! I'd like to find out more about this. I would not have expected that to be the site of a hippie / oppressive police confrontation. I hope my Dad wasn't there... | ||
Bulletmagnet Member Username: Bulletmagnet Post Number: 978 Registered: 01-2007 |
Summertime 1, here is a link with a mention about your question in the thread: https://www.atdetroit.net/forum/mes sages/89914/123887.html?117037 8044 It's a lot to read through, but in it I did recall the riots you ask about. Hope this helps. Bullet | ||
Flanders_field Member Username: Flanders_field Post Number: 121 Registered: 01-2008 |
There were "mini-Woodstocks" going on all the time, all school year long, on the lawns, sidewalks, and parking lot of Denby HS in the early-mid 70s, and one warm spring afternoon the cops came and surrounded the front of the school with police cars and paddy wagons. Some even drove onto the lawns. Every student who was outside at the time was herded up and the ones who tried to run were tackled, and handcuffed. I had just finished attending my classes for the day, and happened to be outside when the bust went down. We were all taken to the Conner precinct station. Everyone was searched for contraband and had to provide their class schedules as proof that they were a student and were not scheduled to be inside the school attending classes. I was one of the first students to be processed, and since I was clean and provided proof that I was supposed to be leaving school at that time, they released me, but I had to walk home from the station. I don't know what happened to the other students who might have been caught with drugs, and/or were playing hooky from their classes, and I did not stick around to find out. | ||
Jokerman Member Username: Jokerman Post Number: 111 Registered: 07-2005 |
Mackinaw: If your dad was a young adult in 1972, with hippie tendencies, that liked to party, and that lived on the east side, he might have very well been there. Most of us from that time grew up to be normal parents with normal jobs, normal lifestyles, and normal children. Ask him about it. It was a very interesting, important, and exciting time. | ||
Mackinaw Member Username: Mackinaw Post Number: 4398 Registered: 02-2005 |
He was 17, and I will ask him. He'll probably say he "knew people" that were there. | ||
Sumas Member Username: Sumas Post Number: 15 Registered: 01-2008 |
I had to think back a long time. I was pretty straight and narrow personally but loads of my friends/acquaintances would hang out there. It wasn't a riot. Neighbors of the park just got tired of the drugs, the parties, the sex and the booze. (The legal drinking age in 1972 was 18.)Was the police force team called SWAT or STRESS? whatever the name, they were pretty evil. They descended on the park...beat the crap out of the kids...tossed loads into paddy wagons. I have a clipping in my teen scrapbook of the incident, a captioned picture in the paper of one of the arrested parties who was an ex boyfriend; the captioned picture said, "he looked high on dope" He probably was. The kids were out of control but the police brutality was inexcusable. Prior to that incident, I cruised the park looking for a friend. I was tailed by the cops in my "fearsome" 1967 VW beetle all over the eastside. I got pulled over when they thought I was escaping to GPP. What they thought was drugs was a baggy of multi colored fuses used to power my old VW. The police were very ... very ...evil in the seventies to hippies and people of color. | ||
Sumas Member Username: Sumas Post Number: 16 Registered: 01-2008 |
I had to think back a long time. I was pretty straight and narrow personally but loads of my friends/acquaintances would hang out there. It wasn't a riot. Neighbors of the park just got tired of the drugs, the parties, the sex and the booze. (The legal drinking age in 1972 was 18.)Was the police force team called SWAT or STRESS? whatever the name, they were pretty evil. They descended on the park...beat the crap out of the kids...tossed loads into paddy wagons. I have a clipping in my teen scrapbook of the incident, a captioned picture in the paper of one of the arrested parties who was an ex boyfriend; the captioned picture said, "he looked high on dope" He probably was. The kids were out of control but the police brutality was inexcusable. Prior to that incident, I cruised the park looking for a friend. I was tailed by the cops in my "fearsome" 1967 VW beetle all over the eastside. I got pulled over when they thought I was escaping to GPP. What they thought was drugs was a baggy of multi colored fuses used to power my old VW. The police were very ... very ...evil in the seventies to hippies and people of color. | ||
Craig Member Username: Craig Post Number: 651 Registered: 02-2007 |
Sumas is remembering TMU, not STRESS. Tony Bertoni's guys in the Furies with two bubbles on the roof. |
