Member Name: Agent Slacker
Date: August 3, 2000
Email Address: slacker23@juno.com
Sect:Discordian

Police Chief Wants Feds to Probe Protest Movement
Submitted by Agent Slacker

This report was submitted to the Traveller by Agent Slacker. It's very important to our freedom of speech!

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Philadelphia's police chief said on Thursday that federal authorities should investigate radical groups that have targeted two presidential conventions, the World Trade Organization and World Bank for mass protests.

At the same time, defense lawyers for hundreds of protesters jailed this week in Philadelphia claimed city officials were keeping their clients behind bars illegally by setting bail at exorbitant levels for relatively minor charges.

On Tuesday, thousands of protesters tried but failed to bring the host city of the Republican National Convention to a standstill by blocking key intersections during their only act of mass civil disobedience.

Police won accolades from city leaders for thwarting the disruptive aim of the demonstrations, while managing to make 369 arrests without provoking widespread violence of the kind seen last year during the WTO meeting in Seattle.

Protesters, representing a wide range of organizations including anarchist groups, called off ``direct action'' campaigns planned for Wednesday and Thursday, saying they would instead mark the last night of the convention with a peaceful candlelight vigil outside a facility holding their jailed comrades.

Sixty jailed protesters had been released by Thursday afternoon. But the criminal justice process was being slowed by detainees who refused to provide their names or other personal details in a show of jail solidarity.

Protest organizers maintain that their intentions are purely nonviolent and say their ultimate aim is to forge a new political movement out of a series of high-profile protests that have now struck several cities in the United States and Canada.

But police Commissioner John Timoney blamed protest leaders for sporadic violence in which 15 Philadelphia officers were injured and nearly 30 city vehicles vandalized. He said those responsible were the same outsiders who had organized both the Seattle protests and violent demonstrations at the World Bank in Washington last April.

A similar coalition plans to hold potentially larger demonstrations later this month in Los Angeles, during the Democratic National Convention.

``I intend on raising this issue with federal authorities,'' Timoney, who was personally involved in one scuffle on Tuesday, told reporters at a news conference.

``Somebody's got to look into these groups,'' he said. ``I don't think you should have people out there who are going to hang around and plan to come into a different city time after time to assault police officers, engage in serious property damage and destruction. That ain't cricket.''

The commissioner mentioned the U.S. Justice Department as a federal agency with possible jurisdiction.

``My hope is that the DOJ will take the request not to investigate the protesters but the police and law enforcement actions,'' responded New York-based civil rights attorney Ron McGuire, who is representing jailed protesters.

Arrests on Tuesday and Wednesday included 19 people charged with felony offenses, such as assault. More than 270 others faced misdemeanor charges while 10 received summary charges. Among those in custody were several alleged protest leaders, including the head of the Ruckus Society, a Berkeley, California-based group that trains activists in nonviolent civil disobedience.

``We know they had a list of things they were going to do, and they set about doing it. That, to me, is kind of troubling,'' said Timoney, who shrugged off claims that some leaders were arrested while simply walking the street with cellular phones.

Civil rights lawyers had a different version of events, however. ``What we are seeing in Philadelphia is a civil rights catastrophe of the first order,'' said McGuire.

He said the city was imposing bail of more than $15,000 in cases that would ordinarily merit only a couple hundred dollars in an apparent bid to keep protesters in jail until after the Republican convention had ended. ``I cannot imagine a reason for these levels other than deliberate and unconstitutional detention,'' McGuire said.

Police confirmed bail had been set at $50,000 for one suspect charged with misdemeanor offenses.