MIAMI -- City officials made it easier Thursday for police to arrest protesters as downtown Miami steeled itself for massive demonstrations next week at the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit.

Miami City commissioners unanimously approved a controversial law that gives police sweeping authority to arrest protesters, who predict the measure will allow authorities to trample on their free speech rights. Police Chief John Timoney pushed for the measure, saying it was needed to protect his officers and the public.

The law was passed as the first of thousands of activists began to trickle into Miami, during a week in which activists already have complained of police harassment. As in past large public gatherings involving civil disobedience, critics fear efforts to protect public safety are on a well-choreographed collision course with civil liberties.

ACLU lawyers said they expect law enforcement authorities to trample on constitutionally protected free speech if police and protesters clash. They vowed to challenge the law in court.

"Some people will put [the constitution] in their pockets. Others will trample on it," said South Florida ACLU president Lida Rodríguez-Taseff.

The newly passed law limits what people can carry during parades or large public gatherings -- including rifles, knives, slingshots, brass knuckles, rocks, golf balls, knives, water balloons, glass bottles and thick sticks.

Commissioners did write in exceptions to the stick provision, allowing for the puppets and stilts favored by some of the anti-globalization demonstrators. But, technically, the puppets are in violation unless fully assembled.

Two of the commissioners who approved it noted the law could easily be repealed.

Frequent police critic Max Rameau, who is working with Root Cause, a coalition of local anti-globalization groups, warned against giving officers more discretion in making arrests. Already, activists are feeling hassled by police, he said.

Others have been rounded up by police, including Daniel Grace, 20, and a 17-year-old companion, both x from California, who were arrested on Oct. 29 for loitering and prowling by North Miami Beach police, who characterized them as "suspected anarchists."

This week, Miami-Dade police sparked a controversy when they arrested three other anti-globalization demonstrators just blocks from a warehouse activists are using to organize protests.

Michael Pitula, 25, of Illinois, was charged with loitering and prowling and resisting arrest without violence. Kaitlyn Muriel Tikkun, 32, of Vermont, was arrested on the same charges as well as possessing a controlled substance because she carried prescription drugs without proof she holds a valid prescription. JoshuahÖ Grimm, 23, of Pennsylvania, was arrested and charged with carrying a concealed weapon -- a knife under his T-shirt.

Miami-Dade police spokesman Juan DelCastillo said the three struck officers as suspicious because they walked around a warehouse during a holiday, and had backpacks with metal tubing and wires protruding.

"We don't harass anybody," DelCastillo said.

The ACLU's Rodríguez-Taseff disagreed: "We think what happened smacks of harassment and false arrest."

The arrests also raised the eyebrows of Miami City Manager Joe Arriola, who said he has told county officials to "relax."

"I don't want to make martyrs out of these demonstrators," Arriola said.

Protest organizers say police have stopped activists at least two dozen times in the past few weeks. Legal experts have been gathering complaints about police, said David Meieran, an activist from Pittsburgh.

Three weeks ago, an officer approached a group of activists as they were preparing to leave Bayfront Park after a meeting, Meieran said. He said the officer asked if they had been handing out fliers and photographed the license plates of several activists' vehicles before leaving.

Meieran said he also was stopped and asked to supply identification last week.

"It's an unacceptable level of harassment," he said. "Basically, we're being profiled."

Apprehension over anticipated protests has spread to other South Florida municipalities. In Palm Beach County, Boca Raton city officials passed a similar law last month to prepare for possible demonstrations at the Republican Governors Association annual meeting Nov. 19-23.

The city of Coral Gables also has passed a law fashioned after the restrictions approved in Miami.

Howard Simon, director of the Florida ACLU, said he thinks there will be arrests in Miami.

"There's reason for some anxiety about what will happen on the downtown streets," he said. "The story as of now is there is a lot that's not knowable."

Recent history has taught the players in this street drama plenty. According to lawyers for the activists, if police and protesters clash, it likely will play out as follows:

Police will sweep up hundreds of demonstrators on minor charges and jail them. By the time they're released, the summit will be over. The charges won't hold up in court, and although civil rights and free speech may be compromised, the public safety crisis will have passed.

In the past, Simon said, "The constitution was suspended."

It's the lesson learned from the "Battle in Seattle" -- the unexpected riots that disrupted the World Trade Organization meetings in 1999 and left at least 3 million in damage in downtown Seattle. It happened again three years ago, during the political conventions in Philadelphia and Los Angeles.

Seattle was the first time a new breed of anti-globalization protesteor raised its head, and a movement was born. The protesters are well organized, putting their message out over the Internet while they travel around the country staging demonstrations that, with their characteristic puppets and caricatures, are part street theater, part civil disobedience. Although 525 people were arrested in Seattle, the charges were dismissed in almost all cases.

A few months later in Washington,, D.C., a city accustomed to public demonstrations, police arrested 1,300 people protesting meetings at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund buildings. They were freed after posting $50 "bail" and the charges were dropped.

In Philadelphia, 391 people were arrested and held under high bail during the Republican National Convention in August. Police, headed by Timoney, now Miami's police chief, raided a puppet warehouse and arrested a few protest leaders on the eve of the convention. Charges later were dismissed against almost all the protesters.

In Los Angeles, which was host to the Democratic National Convention later that month, the ACLU obtained a restraining order keeping police out of the protesters' puppet warehouse.

The city saw about 200 arrests, including 70 bicyclists who subsequently sued for civil rights violations. The case was settled, as was a lawsuit filed by journalists hit by rubber bullets fired by police.

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