Anti-Supremacist Protest Turns Into Riot in Toledo

A crowd that gathered to protest a white supremacists march Saturday turned violent, throwing baseball-sized rocks at police, vandalizing vehicles and stores, and setting fire to a neighborhood bar, authorities said.

Mayor Jack Ford blamed the rioting on gangs taking advantage of a volatile situation. He declared a state of emergency, set an 8 p.m. curfew through the weekend, and asked the Highway Patrol for help.

“It’s exactly what they wanted,” Ford said of the group that planned the march, which was canceled because of the rioting.

At least two dozen members of the National Socialist Movement, which calls itself America’s Nazi Party, had gathered at a city park to march under police protection. Organizers said they were demonstrating against black gangs who they said were harassing white residents.

Violence broke out about one-quarter of a mile away along the planned march route shortly before it was to begin. One group of men pounded on a convenience store, and others overturned vehicles. There was a report of a shooting, but police didn’t find a victim, Police Chief Mike Navarre said.

For several hours, about 150 police officers chased bands of young men through the area. Officers wearing gas masks fired tear gas canisters and flash-bang devices designed to stun suspects, but the groups continued throwing rocks and bottles. Several officers and firefighters suffered minor injuries, Navarre said.

Finally, police marched shoulder-to-shoulder down the street shouting to people to stay inside, and the crowd of several hundred dispersed.

At least 65 people were arrested on charges including assault, vandalism, failure to obey police and failure to disperse. The white supremacists had left hours earlier, Navarre said.

“We frankly could have made a couple hundred arrests easily,” Navarre said. “We just didn’t have the resources on hand to arrest all of them.”

The mayor had appealed to residents the night before to ignore the march. He said the city wouldn’t give the Nazi group a permit to march in the streets but couldn’t stop them from walking on the sidewalks.

When the rioting broke out, Ford tried to negotiate with those involved, but “they weren’t interested in that.”

He said they were mostly “gang members who had real or imagined grievances and took it as an opportunity to speak in their own way.”

“I am disappointed that some folks who clearly are not strong citizens to begin with took this opportunity to make this statement,” Ford said. “I was chagrined that there were obvious mothers and children in the crowd with them. Several intimated that they had guns.”

Thomas Frisch, 76, said a large group of men destroyed the exterior of a gas station next to his home of 30 years.

“A whole big gang started to come in here. Next thing you know, they’re jumping on the car. Then they overturned it. Then they started on the building, breaking windows, ripping the bars off,” he said.

Louis Ratajski, 86, and his nephew, Terry Rybczynski, left Jim & Lou’s Bar as a crowd gathered in front pelting police with rocks and breaking the windows. They had climbed down a fire escape from the apartment where Ratajski lived over the bar and only later saw the fire on television.

“I was shaking. I feared for my life,” Rybczynski said.

Keith White, another resident, criticized city officials for allowing the march in the first place.

“They let them come here and expect this not to happen?” asked White, 29.

A spokesman for the National Socialist Movement blamed police for losing control of the situation.