Syracuse, NY - Syracuse police didn't have enough riot shields to defend themselves from the onslaught of rocks, household appliances and glass bottles hurled by an angry crowd.

It was so bad city police called in every available officer across Onondaga County - and asked suburban departments to bring their riot shields with them.

Those are some of the new details to emerge at an ongoing trial this month that reveals that the Father's Day 2016 riot on Syracuse's Near West Side was worse than previously known. Veteran officers who testified in the trial of six people accused of participating in the riot said it was the worst confrontation they'd ever seen.

The June 19 riot was a horrendous end to what had been a daylong party to celebrate fathers. The following account of the riot is based on trial testimony and police statements released to Syracuse.com under the Freedom of Information law.

Police armed with riot shields and pepper spray clashed with protesters throwing everything from cinderblocks to a VCR to a bicycle tire. An empty Hennessy cognac pint connected with an officer's jaw. A rock struck one officer before landing on another's foot.

Police flooded the scene from as far away as Baldwinsville and Skaneateles. After city police ran out of riot shields, suburban departments brought in more.

The frontlines of the riot centered on a small area in the 300 block of Tully Street, between two brick rowhouses. There were 15 to 20 people hurling insults and objects in the faceoff with police, with another 50 to 60 people behind them.

The build-up to the tense confrontation has been well-documented by authorities: A group of suspected gang rivals had opened fire among the throngs of hundreds of people. A police officer had rushed into the fracas alone. Officer Kelsey Francemone engaged one of the armed men and shot him to death.

As the man - identified as Gary Porter - lay dying in the courtyard of the James-Geddes housing complex, Francemone went to disarm him and try to help him. An angry crowd attacked her. The officer later escaped.

Officers were ordered to "hold the line" - a tight human barrier with riot shields facing the crowd - as others investigated the shooting.

Much of the testimony at the riot trial revealed disturbing details about the crowd's behavior that night.

People in the crowd shouted threats - "Who's got a gun? Let's kill these (bleeping) pigs!" - and hurled objects ranging from a bicycle tire and bricks to a bag of garbage and clods of dirt, Sgt. Sean Ryan testified.

Video played to the jury showed officers holding the line while being taunted, spit on and targeted with makeshift projectiles. An African-American officer was targeted with racial slurs as he silently held a police shield.

Ryan, who coordinated the police line, testified that officers had to take the abuse to keep the line intact. Police were ordered not to go into the crowd to make arrests for thrown objects because it was too dangerous and opened a weakness in defenses.

"An officer was hit with rock," Ryan testified. "He tries to arrest the individual. I told him not to go. It was unsafe. It would take two guys to take someone into custody. It could have broken the line."

In court, Ryan identified a 25-pound police shield that had been dented by a cinderblock thrown from the crowd. Some of the rioters tried to hurl objects over the initial line of officers to hit others behind them, Ryan said.

Some people in the crowd were trying to calm things down, but they were outnumbered by those causing the riot, Ryan testified. Twice, officers fired pepper spray into the crowd.

At one point, Syracuse Police Chief Frank Fowler arrived in civilian clothes and tried to talk to the crowd across the police line. He called to someone he knew in the crowd, who crossed a police tape to chat with him.

But others in the crowd hurled insults at the chief. Someone taunted him for his son's criminal record: "Your son's a criminal, Frank!" (Fowler Jr. is currently facing drug charges.)

The chief eventually left the frontline, unable to calm the crowd down.

The six men on trial are accused of felonies for engaging in "tumultuous and violent conduct." They don't deny the riot happened, but say police arrested the wrong people.

A violent night

Testimony at trial described a crowd so rowdy that it tried to stop emergency personnel from helping the dying Porter.

First, the crowd refused to let officers near his facedown body. Then, the crowd did not allow an ambulance into the scene. It had to go around the block to get anywhere close, Ryan testified at trial.

It took nine minutes for ambulance workers to arrive on-scene, he testified.

Then, the crowd made it unsafe to treat Porter at the scene, according to police statements. As Porter was wheeled back to the ambulance on a stretcher, people kept trying to pull Porter away, Officer Shawn Hahn wrote in his police report.

"As we arrived at the ambulance, people were still getting in the way and preventing us from getting the victim inside the ambulance," Hahn wrote. "I then had to push several people away from the stretcher."

As officers tried to move crowds away from the shooting scene, they began throwing objects and threatening police. One man implored someone to get an AK-47 assault rifle and "just spray" the police with bullets, Officer Jacob Breen wrote in his report.

Meanwhile, rumors circulated among the angry crowd that a white police officer had fatally shot an unarmed black man in the back. Even a police officer reported the erroneous information in a 911 dispatch. The false information spread like wildfire, inciting the crowd to attack and threaten officers who responded that night.

Eventually, officers formed the police line in-between the two rowhouses. The police tape was slightly ahead of the buildings, but officers retreated between the buildings due to the potpourri of objects being hurled at them, Ryan testified.

That didn't work, either, though because people then tried ripping down the police tape. So officers advanced again to the tape and continued getting pelted with items, Ryan testified.

The aftermath

About 20 minutes after Chief Fowler left the frontline early June 20, a SWAT team arrived to clear out the area, Ryan said.

That came more than an hour after the confrontation at the police tape began. The crowd was moved to the perimeter of the housing complex. Officers moved in to secure the scene.

In the days afterward, police arrived in force to make arrests. A total of 13 people were charged with rioting. Seven of them have pleaded guilty; the other six are on trial right now.

Officers counted 37 gunshots fired that night. A grand jury was convened to investigate Officer Francemone's shooting. She was found to have been justified.

At trial, Ryan said it was the worst situation he's faced in 19 years as an officer. Another wrote in his police report it's the only time that he's actually felt frightened for officers' lives.

And Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick called it "one of the ugliest and disgusting scenes of incivility" in Syracuse history.