Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette Carole Wiedmann of Sewickley is taken into custody by police. Click photo for larger image.

Pittsburgh police arrested three people yesterday morning during an anti-war protest outside an Army recruiting station in Oakland.

The protest involved about 30 to 50 people who marched from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History to the recruiting post near Forbes Avenue and Atwood Street.

Police Sgt. Clint Winkler said he ordered officers to move in on the protestors after one of the marchers grabbed a TV camera and damaged it and protesters then attacked an officer who tried to intervene.

As police dispersed the group, they used a Taser and pepper spray on one woman and charged her with disorderly conduct, failure to disperse and resisting arrest, Winkler said. Another woman, Carol Wiedmann, 68, of Sewickley, was taken to Presbyterian University Hospital after being bitten in the thigh by a police dog, and was to be charged with disorderly conduct and failure to disperse. A teenager also was cited and released.

In a news release prepared before the event, De'Anna Caliguiri of the Pittsburgh Organizing Group said the protest was planned because "it is becoming more and more urgent that we act in a way that impedes the vicious routine of military recruitment in Pittsburgh."

David Meieran, another group activist, said when the marchers got to the recruiting station with the intention of shutting it down, it already was closed. He contended police attacked the protesters without provocation as they were assembled on the sidewalk outside the station. But Winkler said police did not move to disperse protesters until the camera incident.

Tom Boney, a visitor from Graham, N.C., who was helping enroll a child at Carnegie Mellon University, said he could not see any provocation by protestors, but said police did use the police dog to force the protesters to move. Boney also said he did not see Wiedmann do anything to provoke the dog into biting her.