Alex Jones (center), an American conspiracy theorist and radio show host, is escorted out of a crowd of protesters after he said he was attacked on July 19. | AP Photo Cleveland's peace holds despite protests in the streets

CLEVELAND — In the streets surrounding the Republican convention, tensions escalated on Tuesday with the presence of armed demonstrators, isolated scuffles among competing groups of activists, a brief appearance by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and reports about the chucking of the odd “urine bomb.”

But the widespread unrest that had been expected in the weeks leading up to the GOP confab has yet to materialize.


The relative calm has been a boon to public safety, if not necessarily to the fortunes of nominee Donald Trump, who declared himself “the law and order candidate” last week and whose campaign believes it benefits from images of left-wing protesters raging against the New York businessman. So far, the convention protests have drawn hundreds of demonstrators but have not inspired the chaos encountered outside earlier Trump events in Chicago, San Jose, Albuquerque or Anaheim.

Despite a series of incidents, Cleveland police held an evening news conference announcing only three arrests on Tuesday in the vicinity of the arena. Those arrests, in the morning, were for climbing a flagpole at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — bringing the week's total of convention-related arrests to five.

On Tuesday, there seemed to be roughly as many media workers covering protests and law enforcement officials policing them as demonstrators actually participating.

In the early afternoon, a Reuters report of a gunshot on a police vehicle near the Quicken Loans Arena briefly sent ripples of alarm through downtown Cleveland, but police quickly confirmed that the report was erroneous.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame arrests aside, the streets remained quiet through the afternoon, until protesters from various factions began massing at Public Square just before 4 p.m. The radical Princeton professor Cornel West, who had announced the protest earlier Tuesday, was expected to attend — but Jones, the prominent conspiracy theorist, showed up first.

Jones — who interviewed Trump on his “InfoWars” radio show last year — was surrounded by a clutch of supporters on Tuesday as he began shouting into a megaphone condemning “Stalinists” and “Communists,” in a standoff with leftist anti-Trump demonstrators. When a scuffle broke out, police poured in to separate the two groups and removed Jones from the square.

Jones was not arrested, said a representative of the city’s joint information center. “He was removed for his safety.”

At one point, a man in a Muslim skullcap carrying an assault rifle appeared at Public Square, taking advantage of the state’s open carry law, and showed his paperwork to police. Later, a group of self-described “Minutemen” appeared, also carrying assault rifles.

As a helicopter circled overhead, small group of Trump supporters was interspersed with members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, who condemned police officers, and fundamentalist Christians, whose signs proclaimed “America: God hates your sins” and said Jesus “has a pressure cooker for every dead Muslim.”

Feet away, on one side of the square, tourists continued to play ping-pong and sip beers at picnic tables. Pranksters tied to Triumph the Insult Comic Dog carried signs condemning babies born by C-Section.

Across the street, convention delegates strolling into the Ritz and the Renaissance hotels barely took notice.

Police — hundreds of whom had flown in from all over the country — broke up the crowds using bicycles and mostly cleared the square of protesters by 6 p.m. Displaced demonstrators poured down Euclid Avenue and split into subgroups. Clashes broke out, along with multiple reports of “urine bombs” being thrown and shoving between police and anarchist demonstrators.

At one point, the convention’s media filing facility at the Huntington Convention Center was briefly put on lockdown as protesters marched by.

The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, alerted staffers and volunteers in the evening about “suspicious men described as Muslim carrying large back packs and carrying assault [weapons]." But as of Tuesday night, those reports remained unconfirmed and no gun violence broke out.

Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams personally oversaw much of the policing, and even exchanged pleasantries with gag presidential candidate Vermin Supreme at Public Square. At one point, at the intersection of Lakeside Avenue and East Ninth Street, he negotiated face to face with a small group of protesters aligned with “Anonymous” who read him the First Amendment and said they were “tired of being oppressed.”

At the intersection, Williams wrote out directions home for a 16-year-old boy wearing an anti-police sticker on his shirt. Then he declared the gathering at the intersection an unlawful assembly.

The group Food Not Bombs arrived to distribute water, cherries and bagel sandwiches, and protesters took to the sidewalks to eat. They were joined by Trump supporter Michael Rine of Taylor Mill, Kentucky, who wore a "Make America Great Again" hat and grabbed a bottle of water. “The police have done an excellent job,” he said.

Donovan Harrell contributed to this report.