Police officers told delegates Wednesday to line up on a yellow line in the street and ordered all others to leave the area.
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Multiple people with their hands cuffed behind them were detained by police.
About 300 officers from more than a dozen law enforcement agencies are patrolling on bicycles in downtown Cleveland during the convention, the police chief said. One officer was seen bleeding from his elbow.
One man who was in handcuffs stood in the street with his shirt pulled above his shoulders.
The banner also included “Ban Fracking” and “Tear Down The Wall”, a reference to presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s call to build a wall between the USA and Mexico to stop illegal immigration.
Carl Dix of the Revolutionary Communist Party, which organized the flag burning, says the group hoped to conduct the event as a political statement quickly before police came.
The skirmish erupted just outside an entrance to the arena and near a row of popular restaurants where cable news networks had set up for the week.
Police yelled to people to move back as the flag burning group locked arms.
A smaller coalition of anarchists peeled off from the gathering and attempted to march on the convention hub, but a phalanx of officers blocked their narrow path. What followed was a cat-and-mouse game, with some shouting but no arrests, that ended farther away from the arena than when it began – on another closed off avenue.
Earlier in the day, blocks away from the arena, a right-wing religious group lifted a banner reading “Jesus is angry with you sinners”, while kissing lesbians mocked their message, helping turn Cleveland’s Public Square into part-carnival, part-debate floor.
The expansive square was a free-flowing mix of ideas and beliefs along with colorful characters pounding on bongos and wailing on a sousaphone.
A threatened flag-burning later Wednesday had potential to fuel already bubbling tensions outside the Republican National Convention.
“Trump has proposed registering Muslims in a database, ban Muslim travel to the USA, and falsely claimed that Islam hates America”, said Nihad Awad, Council on American-Islamic Relations National Executive Director.
There were no signs of trouble, unlike Tuesday, when skirmishes broke out among demonstrators and police used their bicycles to keep them apart.
“I’m out here to illustrate that not all gun owners, if any or very few, are irresponsible or uneducated”, he said.
Alex Jones, second from right, an American conspiracy theorist, radio show host, is escorted out of a crowd of protesters after he said he was attacked in Public Square on Tuesday, July 19, 2016, in Cleveland, during the seco…
Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams and officers on bikes then continued pushing those gathered out into side streets near the convention center where Republicans prepared for their third night of speeches.
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Overall, five people have been arrested since the four-day convention started on Monday, police spokeswoman Sgt. Jennifer Ciaccia said late Tuesday.
