CLEVELAND - The communist group that burned an American flag Wednesday outside the Republican National Convention - and saw 18 of its members arrested in the ensuing scuffle with police - is contesting the police account of the incident, saying the Cleveland police department interfered with protected First Amendment speech.
The protesters face charges including assaulting a police officer and failure to disperse. Police say they intervened in the flag burning when one of the group's members - Joey Johnson, who lit a flag on fire at the 1984 in RNC and won a Supreme Court case that declared flag burning protected speech - lit himself on fire.
"This is a lie made up to justify the suppression of protected speech," Sunsara Taylor, a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, wrote on Twitter. Johnson "is in GREAT SPIRITS. He NEVER 'was on fire.' "
The protesters have said they also were not ordered to disperse.
Williams said that Johnson had indeed set himself on fire and that a lieutenant on the scene and bike officers moved in to extinguish him.
"The lieutenant was telling him, 'Hey, buddy, you're on fire,' " Williams said. "And he was trying to put the guy out, and they tried to push them away, and basically struck the lieutenant, and that's when our officers intervened."
Williams said he rushed to the scene after the flag was set alight and personally gave a face-to-face dispersal order three times to the protesters, who by then had locked arms near the entrance of the RNC.
Many demonstrations this week here have been hugely outnumbered by police and reporters on scene. Williams said most protests have drawn about 30 to 50 participants, twice as many officers and some 100 reporters.
A larger protest is planned for 1:30 this afternoon, organized by a group called Stand Together Against Trump. Protesters will march across the Hope Memorial Bridge into downtown Cleveland.
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