Bikes, tables did a good job

Bicycles and ping-pong tables as tools for crowd control?
It sounds crazy.
But those were some of the methods put to use last week in Cleveland by police doing their best to cope with what many had feared would be an incendiary situation on the streets outside the Republican National Convention.
As it turned out, the situation wasn’t incendiary after all.
And bicycles and ping-pong tables may deserve some of the credit.
Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg noted the effectiveness of the bicycle patrols in a piece last week.
Faced with a potential confrontation between an LGBTQ group protesting Republican positions and a religious right group attacking those protesters — “You are pathetic in the eyes of God” — police on bicycles provided a useful buffer. They simply rode their bikes in a circle around the “Bible Believers” group.
Doing so, they protected those demonstrators and created a buffer between them and those they opposed.
No billyclubs were needed. No shields. No tear gas. Simply a non-violent tactic that allowed everyone to sound off but kept them from getting at one another’s throats.
Jay County’s Bill Davis provided the ping-pong table anecdote.
As he and Mary were making their way back home Friday afternoon, he called the newspaper. And his praise for the security efforts in Cleveland was abundant.
The coolest thing, he said, was when police set up a ping-pong table in the middle of the street right in the thick of the demonstrations.
It proved to be another creative tactic that defused the potential for violence.
Before you knew it, Indiana State Police who had been brought in as extra security were playing ping-pong with demonstrators. And if you’re playing ping-pong with one another, you’re not likely to end up in a violent clash.
Other tactics were also at work, such as asking protesters to turn down the volume a bit on their bullhorns. They still had their say, but they were speaking rather than shouting. And that makes a difference.
At this point, it’s far too early to say who should get credit for making Cleveland safe during a potentially difficult period. But whoever came up with the idea of using bicycles and ping-pong tables and volume controls as a way of lowering the temperature deserves a real round of applause. — J.R.