Police on Horseback Break Up Gay Protest : Demonstration: At least two activists are hit by batons outside hotel where Gov. Wilson was speaking.

Police led by officers on horseback waded into a noisy crowd of gay rights activists Wednesday evening, arresting nine and striking at least two with batons outside the Century Plaza Hotel where Gov. Pete Wilson was celebrating “25 years of public service” at a fund-raising dinner.

Demonstrators were continuing their protest of Wilson’s veto of a bill banning job discrimination against homosexuals. Nine demonstrators were arrested on suspicion of felony cruelty to animals for allegedly striking police horses with their protest signs. Protesters called the confrontation a “police riot.”

Rather than move across the street as police had ordered, scores of demonstrators sat down on a median strip outside the hotel on the Avenue of the Stars and began chanting and blowing whistles shortly after 7 p.m.

Moments later, mounted officers began moving into the crowd of 200 and pandemonium broke out, with protesters screaming and yelling as they slowly moved back. At least two demonstrators were knocked to the ground by officers and struck several times with batons as they lay there before being taken into custody.

Jon Heywood, a West Hollywood businessman, said he was among the protesters who sat in the median but fled when mounted police and baton-wielding officers arrived.

“They simply moved in and started beating us with their batons,” said Heywood, who claimed that the protesters offered no resistance.

“We started running to get away from the horses and batons,” he said. “It got a little scary out there.”

Deputy Los Angeles Police Chief Glenn Levant, who directed operations at the Century Plaza, said a “real problem” was that the protesters had no leaders.

“There’s no one to negotiate with,” Levant said. “There’s no one to reason with.”

He said officers wanted demonstrators to move from the median because they could easily have rushed the hotel from that position.

Moreover, Levant said, protesters were blocking traffic and officers found it difficult to “tactically deal with the crowd” while they were on the median. He said officers were trying to move the crowd to the east side of the street, to the plaza outside the Shubert Theatre where about 400 demonstrators already had gathered.

That move failed, however, as the protesters moved north instead and into the Century City Shopping Center where they chanted: “We’re here, we’re queer, and we’re not here to shop.”

Levant said police tactics against the protesters were different than those used in earlier marches because “this was not a march. This was a demonstration at a hotel. We had information they were planning to charge the hotel. The other marches were like civil rights marches, and we treated them as such.”

One demonstrator, Lane Wood, said he and a group of other gay rights activists met with police officials last week and were assured by Deputy Chief Ron Frankle and Cmdr. Robert Taylor that as long as they stayed peaceful and remained on the median at Wednesday’s protest, there would be no attempts to move them.

Doug Fuller, a spokesman for the group ACT UP L.A. said, “We don’t want to demonstrate in front of a theater. We want to demonstrate in front of the hotel because that’s where (Wilson) is. We want to let people in their big limousines know that we don’t support him. We don’t support his homophobic policies. We don’t support discrimination.”

Protester Chris Kilbourne said the confrontation with police Wednesday “fans the flames of anger. They’re fanning the flames of rage.”

A spokesman for Wilson said the governor had not heard the demonstration outside. But as he was giving his speech, a man in a business suit jumped up from a table and shouted an epithet.

He then repeatedly shouted, “You’re a bigot and a liar,” before security officers hustled him from the room.

A woman in a cocktail dress then stood at another table, and also began shouting: “You’re a bigot and a liar.”

After he was taken from the room, Wilson commented, “That’s what’s wonderful about America. Everyone has a right to make an ass of himself.”

Earlier, someone set off a stink bomb in the hotel, and fans had to be used to disperse the stench before the governor’s dinner, police said.

Times staff writers Nieson Himmel and Victor Merina contributed to this story.