RNC: Lessons learned

BY MATT EHLING

With dramatic flourish, Bill Clinton strode onto the stage of the Staples Center and took his place at the podium. The assembled delegates sprang from their seats and raised their voices in a collective roar. For the briefest moment, the cheers of the crowd drowned out the clatter of police helicopters that could be heard echoing through the roof above.

Outside of the convention hall, one could catch glimpses of the choppers maneuvering over downtown Los Angeles, their searchlights probing into the caverns between the skyscrapers. From the entrance to the Staples Center, one also had a clear view of the adjacent, fenced-in parking lot, which served as the convention's designated protest area. The lot was barren, save for a scattering of debris. In place of the crowds that had congregated there throughout the day, there were now only torn flyers and hard rubber projectiles that police had fired just minutes earlier. A radio reporter held up a large rubber bullet for my examination.

"The police told us that we had 15 minutes to get out of here," she said. "And five minutes later, without any other warning, they started shooting the tear gas and everything else."

As we walked toward the security fence, several dozen officers rushed past, clutching 12-gauge shotguns. We had come to Los Angeles to film the spectacle of a national political convention, and the evening wag providing us with plenty of opportunities. We grabbed our camera gear and sprinted off after the LAPD. In the boulevard beyond thefence line, hundreds of Los Angeles police officers were gathering in phallanx formations. LAPD vehicles cruised the street, with SWAT police standing on the running boards. They were clad in black body armor, and their uniforms were festooned with CS gas canisters and "less-lethal" shotgun rounds. With a deafening rumble, scores of police motorcycles raced past us, in pursuit of a small band of protesters who were dispersing into the downtown core.

It was the summer of 2000, and the Democratic National Convention had come to Los Angeles.

On Sept. 1, 2008, thousands of politicians, delegates and reporters will converge on St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center for the commencement of the Republican National Convention. If past conventions are any guide, they will be met in the streets by an equally large throng of protesters. While civic boosters tend to highlight the economic benefits that attend party conventions, these gatherings can also generate a host of nettlesome problems—from the challenges that accompany high-level security events, to the logistical complexities that flow from large-scale street demonstrations. Bound up with both of these matters are civil libertarian concerns over free expression, free assembly and police use of force. As with other areas of civic life, the intersection of these kinds of issues has become ever more complex in the post-9/11 world. This article provides a brief analysis of major security and civil liberties issues that will be at play during the RNC week, based on observations of past events.

PERIMETER SECURITY
As with previous conventions, the size and scope of the security perimeter is likely to be a point of contention between police officials and protest organizers. From a law enforcement perspective, perimeter control is central to an effective security strategy, in order to prevent unauthorized persons from entering the event and to allow screening for weapons and other hazards. From the vantage point of many demonstrators, the expansive security perimeters of past conventions have been used as excuses to move street actions far away from the focus of the protests, thus blunting their effect.

Prior to the 2000 Democratic convention, Los Angeles city officials fought a lengthy (and ultimately unsuccessful) court battle to confine protesters to a discreet location several blocks from the convention site. At the 2004 Republican convention in New York, the Secret Service and the NYPD set out a broad security cordon, which encased several city blocks within concrete barricades. Citing these precedents, local activists have expressed concern about the possibility of similar conditions occurring during the RNC week. In response, St. Paul police officials have stated their intention to keep the security perimeter as small as possible, and have noted that the layout of the Xcel Center will enable this to happen. This issue is likely to generate continued controversy, however, since the size and scope of the perimeter is not expected to be finalized until shortly before the RNC week begins.

In recent years, political conventions have been classified as "National Security Special Events" or "NSSEs," which entail a high degree of federal involvement in setting the boundaries of security zones. Typically, federal agencies such as the Secret Service take the lead in designating secure cordons, while perimeter security itself is a joint local-federal responsibility. Local police agencies generally provide the bulk of the starring and manpower outside of the perimeter area, while the Secret Service stations its personnel within—or on the edges—of the zone. Today, both sets of players coordinate their activities in conjunction with the regional JTTF, or Joint Terrorism Task Force, which involves a multitude of local and federal police agencies. These complex arrangements can raise command and control challenges for the multiple agencies

These complex arrangements can raise command and control challenges for the multiple agencies involved." They also create a mix of jurisdictional issues that impact police accountability as it relates to the treatment of protesters, legal observers and others.

In addition to the accountability issues that may arise from NSSEs, these events now pose additional challenges to protesters, who could face harsher penalties for entering secure areas during such events. Recently, a new federal statute was added to the U.S. Code (the codification of the general and permanent U.S. laws) during the re-authorization of the USA PATRIOT Act, which set out significant criminal penalties for refusing to leave an area designated as secure by the Secret Service. Violating this law entails: "willfully or knowingly entering or remaining in any posted, cordoned off, or otherwise restricted area of a building or grounds where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting."

Those who violate the statute can be subject to: "a fine ... or imprisonment for not more than one year." Higher penalties can be assessed for carrying or using a "firearm or dangerous weapon."

One can see the utility of this law from a security perspective, but it remains to be seen how broadly the statute will be interpreted—particularly in regard to protest actions. If applied expansively, this statute could have significant implications for legal observers and videogra-phers at the RNC event, who may be skirting the edges of secure cordons in order to observe police/protester interaction. Protesters could also be at risk effacing enhanced penalties under a broad application of the law. Could, for instance, entering a secure area with a picket sign be construed as "carrying a dangerous weapon" by the U.S. Attorney's office? Such broad statutory interpretations are not uncommon in federal prosecutions. During the 1980s, for example, racketeering laws originally aimed at organized crime were interpreted expansively, and used to target sit-in protesters at abortion clinics instead.

CROWD CONTROL PROTOCOLS
Police agencies at NSSEs need to prepare for all types of crowd control contingencies, due to the vast numbers of people who descend upon such events. In addition to the scores of delegates and support staff, protesters at the  2000 DNC numbered in the thousands and demonstrators at the 2004 RNC numbered in the tens of thousands. While prudence requires that crowd control planning inculde preparations for riots and other disturbances, past NSSEs have also illustrated the hazards posed by the improper deployment of riot police. At the 2000 Democratic convention, LAPD officers fired volleys of rubber bullets at fleeing protesters and reporters, crushing the sternum of a CNN sound recordist with a riot baton. Such overzealous police behavior can chill free speech, cause significant injuries, and subject the host city to hundreds of thousands of dollars in civil claims. The city of Seattle, for instance, is still litigating WTO claims from police actions undertaken nearly eight years ago.

A well-coordinated crowd-control plan is essential to the operation of a large-scale event like a political convention. If such a plan flounders, its failure can not only compromise event security, but it can cause other excesses as well. For one such example, we can look to the Seattle WTO Ministerial Conference, where poor preparation on the part of the municipal police department was compounded by federal pressure brought to bear on the host city. Had Seattle properly managed the first day of the WTO meeting, much of the aggressive police clamp-down that occurred later on could have been avoided.

On the opening day of the WTO talks, Seattle police deployed large amounts of tear gas and pepper spray against nonviolent demonstrators who were blocking traffic outside of the convention center. As former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper has subsequently noted, the early morning tear-gassing served little practical purpose and set a confrontational tone for the entire event. At the same time, a failure by police to provide adequate staffing throughout the downtown core led to the creation of under-policed zones where vandals could act with impunity. The scope of the vandalism that occurred later that morning then prompted federal officials to lean hard on local police, who authorized sweeping measures to suppress all activity in the streets—including lawful protest and assembly. In the chaos that ensued, individual police officers engaged in random acts of violence, such as assaulting shoppers and passers-by in areas far from the WTO meeting site. Such acts were reported by numerous witnesses, including public officials like Brian Derdowski, a longtime county council member in the Seattle area.

According to Derdowski, SPD officers drove a group of protesters out of downtown Seattle and pusued them into the Capitol Hill residential district. After the protesters dispersed, Derdowski and others reported that police randomly shot pepper ball rounds at pedestrians.