NEW YORK, Aug 31 (AFP) - Police smashed the camera of a local New York television crew at an angry demonstration against Republicans holding their national convention nearby on Tuesday, an AFP correspondent on the scene said.
Hundreds of protesters crowded the streets around Madison Square Garden, the famed New York sports arena where President George W. Bush was nominated earlier Tuesday evening as the Republican party's presidential candidate.
But in a day that saw protests staged across the city, tensions were high in the area around the Garden at night, as delegates and guests entering the convention were jeered and booed.
One man on his way inside was spit on, while the police smashed the television camera from the local channel, the correspondent said. Officials from the channel could not be immediately reached for comment.
Police also went charging with batons raised in pursuit of various demonstrators, who had been screaming, banging drums and blocking streets, the correspondent said.
Eyewitnesses said at least a dozen people had been arrested in the heated confrontation. A police helicopter hovered over the area as police closed down streets to keep order.
After more demonstrators massed in different side streets running to the Garden area, police forced them back away from the area.
"I think the cops give them as much free speech as they think they deserve, and then it comes to the point that they are blocking the streets, and the police just get fed up," said Paul Keefe from the National Lawyers Guild.
Keefe was among hundreds of legal volunteers from the Guild who have been monitoring the police response to protests across the city in connection with the Republican convention that began on Monday.
"Once the day wears on and they've heard everything, they just get sick of it," Keefe told AFP as demonstrators shouted on the street.
The police presence has been extremely heavy after the Bush administration said it had intelligence suggesting al-Qaeda might attack the United States in the run-up to the November 2 election.
But authorities have also been concerned about anti-Bush rallies scheduled throughout the week, and while things have been generally calm, one police officer was wounded on Monday evening.
Police said they were searching for information in connection with the beating of an officer after protesters knocked him off his scooter, and punched and kicked him until he was unconscious.
Outside the Hilton Hotel earlier, a group of about 30 demonstrators dressed as pigs and shouted "Halliburton thanks the GOP," as the Republican Party is known, while delegates from Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan met inside.
Halliburton is the oil services company that was led by Vice President Dick Cheney before he came to office in January 2001. It has won no-bid contracts in Iraq since Saddam Hussein was toppled from power.
Outside the New York studios of conservative-leaning Fox TV, about 200 protesters chanted "Shut up, Fox!"
Near Madison Avenue, a man who had lost his son in Iraq posed with two anti-war activists at the entrance to the Roosevelt Hotel, which houses several delegate meetings, with a sign reading "Why go to Iraq if they die?"
About 2,000 people met at "Ground Zero," the site of the collapsed World Trade Center twin towers, to protest the war in Iraq.