Miami police Chief John Timoney is old school, but by now he must be
aware of several Websites that young techno-geeks who were among FTAA
protesters in the city last month have launched into cyberspace. The
sites contain videos showing riot police wielding nightsticks and firing
rubber bullets and beanbag projectiles at protesters on November 20 in
downtown Miami. For Timoney, and elected officials who continue
to back his version of events that day, the images that sting the most
show police firing at chest level and above upon protesters, and people
with bloody head wounds as a result.
The videos should be useful to Miami's thirteen-member Civilian
Investigative Panel in the coming months, as panel members look into
allegations of police misconduct during the FTAA demonstrations. The
footage could help the CIP determine not only who instigated the
disturbances in and around the downtown, but also whether the proper
police response was to blast rubber bullets and beanbags into the heads
of protesters and others.
In addressing the CIP last week, Timoney repeated what by now has
become his stock line: Protesters, not cops, started the violence by
throwing stuff. "Police officers were assaulted with all sorts of
objects from golf balls to bricks to a whole host of other weapons," he
told the CIP members. "Marbles and wrenches and nuts, lugs."
Demonstrators and others interviewed by New Times and other news media
said riot police assaulted dozens of passive protesters.
If Timoney was aware of all the video that demonstrators and
independent filmmakers shot that day, he acted as if he wasn't. "There
may be some complaints of bruises and what have you," Timoney conceded.
"There were no head wounds as a result of police sticks across people's
heads."
Unfortunately for Timoney, the gash Ryan Conrad received on the
top of his head contradicts the chief's account. Conrad is a
twenty-year-old who attends Bates College
in Lewiston, Maine and works as a carpenter for a theater company. He
was among several hundred FTAA protesters who marched to the fence
surrounding downtown's Inter-Continental Hotel on the morning of
November 20 amid the phalanxes of riot police. He was videotaping his
fellow demonstrators on SE First Street near the corner of SE Third
Avenue when police started clubbing protesters, including him.
"I was bleeding through the scarf I had on my head," Conrad told
New Times during a recent telephone interview. "There was blood all over
my head and all over my hands, and a medic came and grabbed me and the
medic sat me down and bandaged my head." He ended up at the wellness
center street medics had set up in a rented storefront at 532 N. Miami
Ave., although the blows had left him so woozy that he couldn't recall
exactly how he had gotten there. Medics also treated three other people
who were near him at the protest and had head wounds from police sticks,
Conrad said.
"Ridiculous" is how filmmaker Scott Beibin, a 32-year-old
Philadelphia resident and director of the independent Lost Film
Festival, described Timoney's assertion that no one was injured from a
nightstick to the head. "I don't know what he considers a head," Beibin
scoffed. As he was filming the morning demonstration, he said, he saw at
least a dozen people whose heads were bloodied from police batons.
During Timoney's CIP appearance, the chief suggested that
protesters were fortunate that riot police had opted for pepper spray
pellets and Taser electric shock devices instead of batons. He has
voluntarily experienced both, he noted, and found these crowd-control
devices preferable to a skull-clubbing. "I'll opt for the pepper spray
or the Taser anytime," he said.
No members of the panel questioned Timoney about rubber bullet or
beanbag shots to the head, probably because they had yet to see any of
the video anti-FTAA activists have uploaded to the Internet. Timoney
testily took a few questions from CIP members, then insisted he had to
rush to a prior engagement to provide security at the Boys & Girls
Clubs' annual Christmas tree sale on South Dixie Highway and SW 32nd
Avenue.
But salvos were fired that night which opened a new phase of the
postmortem into police actions against protesters. Shortly after Timoney
left the meeting, CIP members approved a motion to hold a public
hearing "as soon as possible" to hear complaints and review police
policy regarding the FTAA affair. Later on Timoney was clobbered by two
television reporters, Michael Putney and Kellie Butler of WPLG-TV
(Channel 10), who had covered the chief's CIP appearance. The tease for
the station's 11:00 p.m. newscast contained footage of local filmmaker
Carl Kesser's blood splattering on the lens of his video camera; while
taping the police advance on protesters on the afternoon of November 20,
Kesser was struck in the head with a beanbag fired by a cop. The lead
story, reported by Butler, showed the filmmaker pointing at the bandages
wrapped around his head and saying there was a hole "the size of a golf
ball" under them. Putney was shown asking the police chief to look at
the disturbing footage. Timoney refused, accusing Putney of trying to
create "a Jerry Springer moment." (Timoney did not respond to a request
for comment.)
Besides the videos, the CIP will also be able to consider
firsthand accounts from street medics. Jeremy Savage, a 24-year-old
Washington, D.C. resident and member of the DC Action Medical Network,
e-mailed this account to New Times: "I treated two people in the street
on November 20 with head wounds. The first was a male who was hit on his
left temple with a rubber bullet and it split his head open. The split
was about a half-inch long and a quarter-inch wide.... Shortly after he
left we came across another male who was shot in his left eyebrow. A few
centimeters lower and he would have lost the eye, I think. His main
complaint was that he couldn't see out of any eye and had a massive
headache. The blunt trauma blinded him. I don't know if it was permanent
or not."
Beibin, the film festival director, said he saw one male
demonstrator in his early twenties who had taken a rubber bullet to the
eye. "It was just -- red," Beibin recalled. "I could see the cornea and
the entire eye was just red, bulging." (He believes the man must now be
blind in that eye, but at press time New Times hadn't been able to
locate the protester.)
Timoney and Miami Mayor Manny Diaz may have thought the trouble
was over, but the hitherto secretive CIP is now under the gun to deal
with this situation in a very public way. The body was created by a
public referendum in 2001. The Miami City Commission approved the
thirteen members this past March; they first convened in June. Since
then the panel has been bogged down in administrative issues and has yet
to launch its first case. Unlike Miami-Dade County's Independent Review
Panel, which investigates complaints against county cops, the CIP has
the power to subpoena witnesses. Because police operations for the FTAA
involved city and county forces, the IRP has proposed cooperating with
the CIP on the hearings. The IRP has scheduled a public meeting for
December 19 at its office at 140 W. Flagler St. to discuss how to
respond to complaints stemming from the FTAA protests. The CIP's next
meeting is scheduled for December 16; at press time the site was
undetermined.
Also at press time, the Miami office of the American Civil
Liberties Union had received more than a hundred complaints about police
conduct during the protests, at least nine of them involving serious
injuries. The CIP had taken in just five, but a request for details went
unanswered. The IRP had received three formal complaints from
demonstrators alleging Miami-Dade police used unnecessary force on them.
IRP executive director Eduardo Diaz read a transcript of one he
received by phone this past Friday from a Florida State University
student: "The complainant reported that several members of the Students
United for Peace and Justice were fired upon without any advance warning
by Miami-Dade police. The complainant reported that he has videotaped
footage of several incidents which can be viewed at
www.tacitconsent.com."
Timoney may have more to worry about than CIP public hearings or a
congressional investigation, being sought by trade unions that
participated in the demonstrations. Since 2002 the U.S. Department of
Justice's Civil Rights Division has been investigating the MPD's
policies, practices, and procedures, in response to controversial
killings by police and allegations of excessive use of force. This past
March, Justice Department lawyer Steven Rosenbaum sent the Miami city
attorney a letter outlining concerns the inquiry had turned up so far.
"MPD fails to provide clear guidance on what constitutes a reasonable
use of force," Rosenbaum wrote. Specifically investigators found flaws
in the department's policies aimed at avoiding unnecessary use of Tasers
and canines. The investigation has not delved into MPD's procedures and
practices regarding rubber bullets and beanbags, nor whether it was
necessary or reasonable to fire them at protesters' heads. The Justice
Department may want to add that to the list.
The Civilian Investigative Panel seeks complaints from people who
feel they were abused by police during the FTAA protests. A form is
available at www.ci.miami.fl.us/cip or at the CIP office at 155 S Miami
Ave from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. weekdays. Complaints also can be faxed
to 305-579-2436 or 305-400-5028.
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