I suspect you're sick and tired of hearing about the FTAA summit and the way that some protesters, as well as innocent bystanders, were manhandled by police. Old news, I hear you say, let's move on. Yes, but we'd be moving on without regard to serious damage done to the First and Fourth Amendments. We'd also be ignoring political and business leaders who seem largely indifferent to it.
I spent most of the FTAA summit reporting from inside the drum-tight ''security zone'' and saw demonstrations only occasionally from the safe side of police lines. From my vantage point, I thought that police generally showed professionalism, discipline and restraint. Now, I'm not so sure.
The stories that we've subsequently heard from dozens of demonstrators and downtown business people are disturbing. Officers seizing tame anti-FTAA flyers from downtown stores and demanding a description of the people handing them out? Sounds dangerously close to Orwell's Thought Police. Seniors trying to find their way back to their buses from the AFL-CIO rally and getting kneed to the ground, handcuffed and thrown in the slammer? Very disturbing.
And while I have no love for the Direct Action goons who came to Miami intent on making trouble, even they have constitutional rights. It's pretty clear that police viewed them, and everyone else on the other side of the security line, as the enemy. Yeh, let some bleeding heart liberal worry about constitutional rights.
First Amendment right
In the weeks before the FTAA talks, Miami Police Chief John Timoney said repeatedly that ''nothing would happen to any demonstrator who keeps his hands to himself.'' But it did happen to many who got swept up indiscriminately. Timoney also said that police would concern themselves with the 2 percent of violent anarchists and protect the rights of others to express their views. But police officers too often intimidated, abused and occasionally wailed on anyone who got in their way, including people who only wanted to exercise their First Amendment right to assemble peacefully and speak their mind. Discretion -- that most powerful weapon in the police arsenal -- was woefully missing.
Mayors Manny Díaz and Alex Penelas have been shamefully quiet about the police misbehavior, evidently assuming that even mild criticism might lessen Miami's chance to be chosen as home for the secretariat.
It's only one of many concessions to common sense that the mayors and other local leaders made to win the permanent FTAA headquarters. It was so important that they virtually shut down business in Miami for five days and turned it into an armed camp to impress the visiting trade ministers. Reminds me of the village in Vietnam that had to be destroyed in order to save it. Same logic, such as it is.
Do our local leaders really believe that the visiting ministers were so naive as to believe that just because their security zone was tranquil, the rest of the city was? Trust me, the security zone in many ways was the twilight zone, and the ministers knew it.
The Miami Police Department is encouraging anyone who feels abused by their officers to file a formal complaint and let Internal Affairs investigate. Sure, the same I.A. that did such a bang-up job of catching those dozen or so officers who planted ''throw-down guns'' and manipulated evidence at crime scenes for a couple of years. The ones recently sent to prison for dishonoring the badge.
Subpoena power
People with complaints can, however, turn to the Miami Citizens Investigative Panel. ''The CIP was created to deal precisely with a situation like this,'' says Howard Simon of the ACLU, an architect of the panel. Miami attorney Larry Handfield, the CIP chairman, agrees.
''One thing I want to assure people,'' Handfield tells me, ``is that this panel takes our job very seriously. Even if the officer in question is Chief Timoney, if the complaint is real, we'll call him up.''
The CIP has 13 distinguished members. It has subpoena power. It has a mandate from voters. The mechanism is there. Let's see it work.
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