3 Protesters Arrested on Convention’s Last Day

As tensions escalated in the fenced-in demonstration zone, three protesters were arrested Thursday outside the Democratic National Convention site at the FleetCenter.

Ending four days of comparative calm, demonstrators engaged in a shoving match with state police in full riot gear. The protesters also burned a two-sided effigy, of President Bush on one side and Sen. John F. Kerry on the other.

Adjacent to the designated protest zone, the crowd on Canal Street grew to about 500. Police raised clubs and batons against the demonstrators.

“This is about police violence and harassment,” said a member of the Bl(a)ck Tea Society who identified herself only as Rose. She spoke through a bandana tied across her face so that only her eyes were visible.

Representing causes including AIDS and both sides of the abortion debate, the demonstrators marched about a mile from Copley Square to the protest area alongside the parking lot where buses let out delegates.

Protesters used wire cutters to slice holes in the fence around the protest zone. Police confiscated the wire cutters.

“We had concerns about this whole free-speech zone,” said Michael Gainer, a Boston community organizer who works with a variety of groups.

Raising his voice to be heard over the demonstrators, Gainer said, “Armed guards, a double layer of fence -- and for what? We are unarmed. This really is an affront to free speech.”

Beverly Ford, a spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department, said a man was arrested Wednesday in Boston outside an event for New York Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The man was behaving suspiciously, and a police check revealed that he was an unregistered sex offender, Ford said. The man is being held in Secret Service custody, she said.