BOSTON -- Several people injured in an anti-Ku Klux Klan demonstration called Monday for an official investigation, charging police attacked protesters and innocent bystanders with nightsticks.
The injured civilians said the police attacked them several minutes after 23 hooded, white-robed Klan members were whisked off to safety in two paddywagons and the situation was returning to normal.
Nineteen people, including six policemen, reportedly were injured in the melee Saturday. In addition, a police spokesman said five horses received lacerations, apparently inflicted by demonstrators with batons.
A chanting crowd of 1,000 blacks and whites shouting, 'Death to the Klan!,' 'pigs' and 'racists' hurled rocks, beer bottles, bricks, eggs and tomatoes at Imperial Wizard Bill Wilkinson and his followers as they marched, under police escort, past the Kennedy Federal Building toward City Hall.
The Klan members were taken into protective custody by the police and were immediately released after they were removed from the scene, but two of the attackers were arrested.
The anti-racist demonstrators said riot-geared police on foot, motorcycles and horses plowed into crowds of bystanders near City Hall Plaza about five to 10 minutes after the paddywagons took the KKK members to safety.
Noreen Kastberg, 35, of Brookline, said she had no intention of ever attacking the Klan marchers but was dragged from the sidewalk and thrown into the street by a policeman in riot gear. She displayed bruises on both arms.
'He had no reason to throw me down; I wasn't doing anything to hurt anyone,' Ms. Kastberg said.
Police said they clubbed anti-racist demonstrators to protect the constitutional rights of the Ku Klux Klan members, who were pelted during a march on City Hall.
'The police were not the aggressors,' said police spokesman Peter Woloschuk.
Mark R. Harsch, 25, of Boston, was charged with disorderly conduct, and Marc Reiss, 28, of Gloucester, was charged with possession of a blackjack and a knife. Both pleaded innocent Monday in Boston Municipal Court.
