MIAMI -- While Miami city officials and police are congratulating
themselves for holding the line against protesters during trade talks
last week, lawyers for the protesters are putting together a list of
civil rights violations.
Kris Hermes of Miami Activist Defense says he can find multiple violations by police of four constitutional amendments.
He said several suits will be filed and he is calling for an
investigation into police actions during talks creating a Free Trade
Area of the Americas.
City officials had feared protesters would disrupt the talks and
tear up the downtown area, much like the 1999 trade talks in Seattle
that resulted in more than $2 million damage during days and nights of
chaos.
The federal government allocated $8.5 million for security in
Miami and local authorities chipped in more. That provided for six
months of training for 2,500 officers and all the equipment they would need.
Police used rubber bullets, concussion grenades, tear gas, pepper
spray, batons and their fists to control the crowds and move them where
they wanted them to go.
There were 231 arrests -- 154 men and 77 women -- during the
talks, the days leading up to them and the aftermath. Three police were
injured, and 16 protesters were also hospitalized. More than a hundred
more were treated at a treatment center run by the protesters.
Police said they did what they had to do, but no more.
\"I thought the officers showed remarkable restraint,\" Police
Chief John Timoney said. \"These are outsiders coming to terrorize and
vandalize our city.\"
Police displayed weapons they said were dropped on the ground,
including bricks, rocks, metal pipes, the metal cover to a water sewer
and a small fuel container filled with gas.
\"What you don\'t see are the bottles of urine as well as the
feces that they intended to throw,\" said Sgt. Denis Morales, a
department spokesman.
\"The work that was done this week was massive and it was done
ethically, professionally,\" Miami Mayor Manny Diaz said at a news
conference.
He said Timoney and his staff \"put together something that was unprecedented.\"
Timoney is well known among the protesters. He was the
Philadelphia police chief during the disturbances there during the 2000
Republican National Convention.
He resigned after that to take a job in the private sector, but returned to police duty last year as part of Diaz\'s effort to clean up the department.
Diaz had said during the week that the police effort during the
FTAA talks was an example of how homeland security should be conducted.
Monday morning, Timoney and Diaz stood at an exit ramp from an
interstate highway that runs through downtown Miami thanking merchants
and residents for the patients last week, when the area was virtually
shut down.
They held up signs saying \"Thank You Miami\" in English and Spanish.
\"We\'re here to let them know we recognize the sacrifices that they made,\" Diaz said.
\"A lot of us had to make sacrifices last week just to host this
event. But certainly they bore the big brunt of the sacrifices. They
shut down,\" he said.
The business owners are hoping that insurance will take care of their losses, but
many are disgruntled and, like the protesters, claimed the police effort
was overkill.
Two law firms said they spent $50,000 each to move their operations to other locations.
A University of Massachusetts freshman charged from his hospital
bed Monday that he suffered a severe head injury at the hands of police
Thursday morning but was jailed and received insufficient treatment.
He said he was denied treatment despite complaints of dizziness and vomiting spells.
Hermes said \"there is real concern about the level of political
repression. These people who by and large were attacked for political
speech not for what they did.\"
He said violations of the First Amendment free speech rights were
obvious, but there were violations to the Fourth Amendment search and
seizure provisions, the Fifth Amendment for arrests for failing to
reveal their identity and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
\"The Fourth Amendment violations were probably the most
significant violations -- extensive stop and searches, and destruction
of property and evidence,\" he said.
Hermes said it will take weeks or even months to get the lawsuits filed.
\"It\'s still early in the process. There are still people in
jail,\" Hermes said. \"When it comes to putting together a lawsuit it
will take a little time, but I can assure you it will take place.\"
\"The mayor said it should be a model for homeland security and
that\'s a very scary comment. There were rampant violations of human
rights,\" he said.
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