Marine exercise in Toledo, Ohio: an attack on democratic rights
By Charles Bogle
29 February 2008

On Friday, February 8, a five-bus convoy transported 200 members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to Toledo, Ohio, for three days of patrol exercises in the central downtown area.

Using the nearly abandoned Madison Building on Madison Avenue as headquarters, the company of Marines, carrying M16 rifles and wearing camouflage uniforms, planned to drive military vehicles through the city streets and carry out foot patrols, engaging in mock gunfights and ambushes with blank ammunition.

A member of the company, Sergeant Davis, had driven ahead of the convoy, but when he arrived downtown and stepped out of his vehicle at approximately 3:20 p.m. (when school children were being bused through the city), he was told by a city employee that Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner wanted him and his soldiers to pack up their equipment and leave by 6 p.m.

The mayor subsequently declared that he had not even been notified of the Marine deployment, and learned of it only through Toledo’s major newspaper, the Blade, on the day of their arrival.

Sergeant Davis agreed and, after a brief stop at a Marine base in nearby Perrysburg, Ohio, he and the rest of the company returned to their Grand Rapids, Michigan, base.

According to Brian Schwartz, the mayor’s spokesperson, Mayor Finkbeiner took this action because armed Marines patrolling city streets “frighten peopleâ€