At 32, Tristan Anderson was slightly older than the average person arrested in last month's FTAA protests.
But in other ways, he fit the profile.
He was white. He lived out of state. And he faced a minor charge of unlawful assembly.
"It's good to be determined and to fight for what you believe in," said Anderson, trying to explain why so many young protesters were arrested. "It's harder as you get older to have the energy."
Anderson, of Berkeley, Calif., was one of 231 people arrested during the Free Trade Area of the Americas meetings in late November. Most faced misdemeanor charges. Only one person, who was charged with a felony, remains in jail.
Given the similarities between those arrested and the overwhelming number of minor charges, activists are accusing police of profiling demonstrators.
"It is profiling, because the targeted speech here was the speech of people that the chief ... called the `spoiled rich kids,' so protesters that fit the profile or possibly could have fit the profile of these spoiled rich kids all got arrested," said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, president of Greater Miami Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
"I think the chief had enough sense to realize that if he engaged in mass arrests of retirees and union members there would be hell to pay, so he went after the defenseless young kids, the overwhelming majority of whom were protesting peacefully."
A South Florida Sun-Sentinel analysis of FTAA-related police reports shows that an overwhelming majority of those arrested were white and under 30. One of five were teenagers. The youngest was 16; the oldest 68. Far more men than women were arrested.
Most were from states as far away as California, New York and Ohio.
Many were charged with such misdemeanors as unlawful assembly and resisting arrest without violence. But more than a dozen were charged with assaulting a police officer.
A dozen faced charges of carrying concealed weapons, including knives, slingshots and rocks. At least one, the only protester still in jail, had a gun in his backpack.
In police reports, officers sometimes noted protesters' dark clothing or hooded shirts. Some protesters were arrested because they simply looked "suspicious" and refused to say what they were doing when they were stopped. Others were hauled to jail because they happened to be standing near protesters suspected of gathering rocks.
The high percentage of people arrested on misdemeanor charges instead of felonies and the fact that many of the minor charges have been dismissed in court show how baseless many of the arrests were, Rodriguez-Taseff said.
Police officials, however, stand behind their actions.
"Anyone who was arrested was arrested because they committed a crime -- period," said Miami Police Lt. William Schwartz, who dismissed accusations that police discriminated against any group. "The people who were the `anarchists' came down here to do exactly what they did, cause problems."
But critics say Schwartz's comments only serve to reinforce their view that police scare tactics leading up to the FTAA meeting kept many locals off the streets.
"We had a lot of people who said they were against the FTAA but wouldn't come out because they thought it was going to be a bunch of white kids throwing Molotov cocktails," said Max Rameau, an organizer with Root Cause, which opposed the trade talks.
Even so, Rameau and others admit South Florida residents are more passionate about immigration and education problems they deal with daily than about the relatively nebulous issue of globalization.
The FTAA is not a hot issue for South Floridians, said local historian Marvin Dunn, who recently was host to a group of global justice activists who planted trees at a community garden in Overtown.
The largely black community there met the group with skepticism, he said.
"This is not a particularly important issue to minorities," Dunn said, arguing that the global justice and peace movements are usually made up of young, white intellectuals because they are more apt to have the time, money and access to information that empowers them to protest.
That's not to say South Florida as a whole is apathetic about social issues, he said.
"Anybody who lived through Elián cannot say South Florida is an apathetic community," Dunn said. The international custody battle for the young Cuban boy inflamed Cubans and non-Cubans alike.
Making broad generalizations about the thousands of protesters based on who was arrested could be misleading, said Naomi Archer, an activist with South Floridians for Fair Trade and Global Justice.
Education forums conducted that week drew many more locals and minorities than the street protests, where most of the arrests occurred, she said.
Anderson, who puts together booths at business conventions, admitted that for some protests, demonstrators want to get arrested to make their point, but he insisted Miami wasn't one of these.
Instead, he said, demonstrators who came to Miami wanted to get their point across.
"There were a couple of people who sat down to be arrested," he said. "But by and large people were arrested walking away from various events."
Staff Researcher John Maines contributed to this report.
Diana Marrero can be reached at dmarrero@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5005.
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