Responding to a tweet asking for any first hand accounts, John Clark sent along the following first hand Rider Report from last Friday’s Critical Mass.  It’s interesting to see what someone in the ride, not involved first hand in any confrontation with the LAPD thought of what was happening as it was happening.

The ride was
fine up until we hit Hollywood and Highland and had LAPD waiting at the
intersection.  When we rolled up I stopped in front of "Ripley’s Believe It or Not" and waited until the group started riding down Hollywood
towards Western.  I then noticed to cops on my left (the ones from the
video.)  As I turned to roll down the street one of the officers was
already in the middle of the street looking around with his hand on his
baton.  He looked right at me and I’m thinking he is about to grab me.
I’m not a small guy so he quickly re-though this as I looked him in the
face.

I continued but turned around to see if he actually was going
to grab someone.  I watched him grab the girl with the white helmet
who has her hands behind her back during the kicking in the video.  He
grabbed her pretty bad so I stopped and starting walking back towards
them to see why he was doing what he was doing. I re-thought that as
I could see it was going to get ugly.  During all of the grabbing not
one cop said move, leave, or stop. 

The Mass continued down
Hollywood.  When we got to Vine I made a small group stop at the red
light as cars where already moving through the intersection.  I was
yelling at people to stay out of the street and moments later two LAPD
cars swerve right in front of of us and jump out with hands already on
batons ready to do I don’t know what.  I continued past the cops who
where blocking the street to continue.  Me and one other person (Yeah
1 out of 400 plus) ended up on the other side of Vine.  At this point
I made a right… and was completely by myself.  I then made my way to
the start of the Peoples rRde to find my roommate and friends and go
back to our house.

From what I could tell  some of the officers where
laughing and others where out to power trip and had no clue of what to
do…It was all bad news …