Responding to a tweet asking for any first hand accounts, John Clark sent along the following first hand Rider Report from last Friday's Critical Mass. It's interesting to see what someone in the ride, not involved first hand in any confrontation with the LAPD thought of what was happening as it was happening.
The ride wasfine up until we hit Hollywood and Highland and had LAPD waiting at theintersection. When we rolled up I stopped in front of "Ripley's Believe It or Not" and waited until the group started riding down Hollywoodtowards Western. I then noticed to cops on my left (the ones from thevideo.) As I turned to roll down the street one of the officers wasalready in the middle of the street looking around with his hand on hisbaton. He looked right at me and I'm thinking he is about to grab me.I'm not a small guy so he quickly re-though this as I looked him in theface.
I continued but turned around to see if he actually was goingto grab someone. I watched him grab the girl with the white helmetwho has her hands behind her back during the kicking in the video. Hegrabbed her pretty bad so I stopped and starting walking back towardsthem to see why he was doing what he was doing. I re-thought that asI could see it was going to get ugly. During all of the grabbing notone cop said move, leave, or stop.
The Mass continued downHollywood. When we got to Vine I made a small group stop at the redlight as cars where already moving through the intersection. I wasyelling at people to stay out of the street and moments later two LAPDcars swerve right in front of of us and jump out with hands already onbatons ready to do I don't know what. I continued past the cops whowhere blocking the street to continue. Me and one other person (Yeah1 out of 400 plus) ended up on the other side of Vine. At this pointI made a right... and was completely by myself. I then made my way tothe start of the Peoples rRde to find my roommate and friends and goback to our house.
From what I could tell some of the officers wherelaughing and others where out to power trip and had no clue of what todo...It was all bad news ...
