COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: War Protests: General
Corps Orders Inquiry into Recruiter’s Response to Protest
John Hoellwarth, Marine Times
July 6, 2006
The commander of the Garden City, N.Y.-based 1st Marine Corps District on Monday ordered a preliminary inquiry into allegations that a recruiter in New Haven, Conn., assaulted anti-war protesters with a baseball bat outside the Marine Corps recruiting office there on June 28.District spokesman Capt. Don Caetano said he expects the inquiry “to be thorough, but we don’t expect it to take a really long time.”
Three officers of the New Haven Police Department arrived at the joint armed forces recruiting center after receiving a call from a Marine sergeant about a “breach of the peace” at the recruiting office, said police spokeswoman Bonnie Winchester. “The sergeant said a group of protesters were blocking his entrance, he told them to move and an argument ensued.”
The group was picketing the Army recruiting office next door to the Marine office in protest of the Army’s decision to prosecute two soldiers who allegedly refused to deploy to Iraq with their units.
According to the police report, the officers observed 10 to 12 protesters, one of whom said the sergeant came to the door with a bat and ordered them away.
Winchester said an “independent witness” told police she saw the Marine “with a bat in his hand, but not in an aggressive manner. He wasn’t waving it or swinging it.”
Nevertheless, the group of protesters, about half of whom were college students, released a statement to the media following the incident, alleging that “a baseball bat-wielding Marine recruiter engaged in an unprovoked assault on two demonstrators outside the recruiting center and then seized the cell phone belonging to another demonstrator who had witnessed and photographed the assault.”
“Nowhere in the report do the protesters allege an assault,” Winchester said. “If our officers would have found any evidence that there had been an assault, there would have been an arrest.”
The recruiter’s name is being withheld by both the Corps and police. Caetano said the Marine has been temporarily re-assigned pending the outcome of the initial inquiry.
Though the Corps’ investigation is ongoing, Winchester said the New Haven Police Department considers the matter closed.
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