"When was that?"
"April 15. Man, when I was here, those pigs beat on me. I want some revenge."
One kid uprooted a parking meter and began bouncing it on the pavement, trying to break the coin box open. This was too much for the policemen waiting near the Square. Suddenly, at a signal, Mass. Ave filled with cops firing tear gas canisters.
"They came from out of nowhere," one kid said later.
BUT not exactly. Where they had come from, in fact, was Harvard Yard. The cops had been stationed in the Fire Station waiting for the call, and when it came, they moved right through the Yard and out onto Mass. Ave. Harvard Police Chief Robert Tonis later said that the police entered the Yard "through the fire gate by cutting a lock." They marched through the Yard to the Gate by Harvard Hall, where a University policeman unlocked the gate and let them out. Tonis said that the Cambridge Police "felt it was a necessary tactical movement to prevent injury to the men." The Police Department refused to make any comment.
The outflanking maneuver was an outstanding tactical success. Panicked by the magical appearance of the men in blue and the quick firing of nearly a dozen tear gas canisters, the crowd panicked and ran, splitting at once into a mob of discrete individuals. Any sense of unity that might have remained was lost; it was time to get out quickly. The police succeeded completely in controlling the action and keeping it away from the Square, where windows might be broken and more unfavorable publicity generated.
The police relentlessly pursued the crowd up toward Radcliffe, blocking off all entrances to the Square, redirecting traffic, and announcing an 11 p. m. curfew. A few windows were broken up Mass. Ave. and one car was set afire, but the disturbance was fairly well dampened before it ever caught on.
Although pleased by the quick police reaction, the merchants still reacted strongly to this latest disturbance by demanding more police presence in the Square-demanding, in fact, a general police crackdown on street people in the Square.
Gone was the idea of liaison, of a Halfway House. The merchants, some of whose losses could be counted in the tens of thousands, wanted the Square cleaned up now. Trapped in a nightmare which seemed to promise street violence escalating in frequency and intensity, they wanted police action.
"We asked police to start redressing the balance to some extent," Zavelle said. "It amounts to saying, 'Kids, if you don't have something definite to do here, you'd better leave.' I don't enjoy saying that," he added.
The merchants put increased pressure on the police, who responded by conducting two quick raids on the Common after dark. In both raids, uniformed plainclothes police, backed by squad cars, entered the Common, made arrests for possession of drugs, and left quickly. Several youths were beaten with clubs during the raids.
The police also increased their pressure on panhandlers and underground newspaper hawkers, and often stopped longhairs and demanded identification.
The merchants seemed to bear this with good grace. "Most people would rather see a blue uniform than someone out of his mind on drugs," Zavelle said.
The coming of Fall seemed to promise some respite from the daily tension of the confrontation between street culture and commercial demands, as street people began to leave and well-heeled Harvard students-the Cambridge merchant's best friends-began to filter back in. But nobody was willing to make long range predictions. The police and the merchants seemed to be increasingly willing to use whatever means were required to transform the Square into a safe place for business. Talking to two longhairs at the end of the summer, one Cambridge policeman, not unsympathetic, seemed to put it best.
"You guys don't have a chance," he said.