MIAMI, Florida (Reuters) -- Miami's police chief has a warning for protesters during next week's pan-American trade talks: Say anything, be as obnoxious as you like, but keep your hands off the cops.
"We expect our police officers to be insulted, their masculinity to be challenged, their ethnicity to be challenged, their parentage to be challenged and they must take it, they know that," Chief John Timoney told Reuters.
"You can yell, scream, say anything you want ... (but) keep your hands to yourself. Put your hands on a police officer and you're in a lot of trouble," said Timoney, promising such offenders would land in jail.
The city expects tens of thousands of protesters during the Free Trade Area of the Americas meeting from November 17 to 21, when officials from 34 North, South and Central American nations will meet in Miami to negotiate a regional trade bloc.
Marches, rallies and vigils are planned to protest everything from the impact on indigenous farmers to the international sale of cigarettes.
More than 40 police agencies have worked since March on a plan to let peaceful protesters air their grievances while thwarting what Timoney called a small group of anarchists bent on damaging property and assaulting police.
Miami authorities want to head off the kind of violence that has disrupted international trade talks in other cities, most notoriously Seattle in 1999.
Timoney, who took the helm of Miami's force in January, spent 29 years with the New York Police Department and oversaw policing at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. He was Philadelphia's police chief when it hosted the 2000 Republican National Convention.
"I've got some experience dealing with these type of events," he said.
Sealed off area
The city has declared a "frozen zone" around the waterfront hotels where the meetings will take place, allowing entry only to credentialed participants.
Protest zones will be fenced off and cleared of trash cans, newspaper racks and anything that could be used to smash windows or build fires, Timoney said. Boaters will be kept several hundred yards away.
A city ordinance expected to gain final approval Thursday would ban glass bottles, slingshots, signs on wooden sticks and giant puppets.
The restrictions have some protest groups accusing police of overreacting in order to justify mass arrests, and trampling on free-speech rights.
Timoney said the opposite was true and that during the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, a small group of rioters squelched the free-speech rights of protesters "who had a legitimate grievance and were out there to voice their concerns regarding jobs leaving the country."
"We're hoping they can get their message out this time," he said.
Borrowing a page from the Pentagon's Iraq war plan, Miami police set up a program to give journalists front-line access by "embedding" them with the bicycle patrols, Coast Guard crews and "rapid response" units securing the meeting area.
Timoney would not go into detail on police plans except to say officers were trained "to use the utmost restraint." Nonviolent offenders, such as those carrying banned items or lying in the street to block traffic, would receive warnings rather than automatic arrest, he said.
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