Miami Mayor Manny Diaz may be relieved to learn that Jamie
Loughner hitchhiked out of Miami two weeks ago and headed home to
Washington, D.C. Loughner was one of the more than 230 people arrested
this past November during protests against the Free Trade Area of the
Americas (FTAA). According to the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office,
police charged 203 people with misdemeanors and 28 with felonies.
Loughner was charged with two misdemeanor counts of resisting
arrest without violence and one of obstruction by a disguised person,
apparently for refusing to give officers her name. She was booked as
Jane Doe and spent five nights in jail. At her February 10 trial
prosecutors asked Circuit Court Judge Beth Bloom for more time to
prepare their case. In a stinging rebuke, Bloom denied the request and
quickly dismissed the charges against Loughner.
But the 39-year-old Loughner, known in Washington, D.C., activist
circles as Bork, is not through with the City of Miami just yet. She
alleges that while police detained her, with her hands cuffed behind her
back, at least one Miami officer painfully and repeatedly twisted her
thumb in an effort to force her to identify herself. (See "Bork Torque,"
December 18, 2003.) Hers was the first complaint filed with Miami's
Civilian Investigative Panel, created to pursue allegations of police
misconduct. The CIP, which can subpoena individuals to testify, has yet
to hire any investigators, even though a year has passed since its inaugural
meeting. Which means Loughner's case will be haunting Mayor Diaz and
Miami Police Chief John Timoney for a while longer.
Loughner, however, is not the type to wait patiently for
bureaucratic wheels to turn, especially when her own charges of police
brutality are involved. She has already proven herself to be an irksome
annoyance to Diaz. Armed with a tape recorder, she ambushed the mayor in
late January while he was in Washington attending the annual meeting of
the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Loughner, who writes articles for www.indymedia.org,
provided New Times with a copy of the tape, which contains two
interviews. In the first, Loughner and an Indymedia colleague asked Diaz
if he still approved of his police department's conduct even though
some demonstrators were seriously injured and others ... tortured.
Diaz: "I have no information that anyone was tortured."
Loughner: "I was."
Diaz: "You were tortured?"
Loughner: "Yes."
Diaz: "By whom?"
Loughner: "One officer was Mendez."
Diaz: "I don't have any evidence of that, certainly not the City of
Miami police. I stand by the actions of the police department."
Later in the day Loughner tracked down Diaz for a second interview,
during which she reminded the mayor of comments made by Circuit Court
Judge Richard Margolius, who said that at the height of the FTAA
demonstrations, on November 20, he witnessed "no less than twenty
felonies committed by police officers."
That set off Diaz. "You know, could I ask you a question?" the mayor testily replied. "Why don't you begin
to condemn the people that are making it impossible for the message to
get out about free trade? The people that come into cities for the sole
purpose of disrupting the summit, creating property damage, injuring
people. Why don't you start condemning those people? We have hundreds
and hundreds of demonstrations in Miami every year. Hundreds of
thousands of people every year. Nothing ever happens." (One notable
exception: the violent protests that erupted after federal agents
snatched Elian Gonzalez in April 2000. Political analysts say outrage in
the Cuban community over abuses by the Miami police officers who
quelled those protests ensured passage of the ballot initiative that
created the CIP.)
The mayor then told Loughner that the extensive deployment of
heavily armed riot police was justified because he expected tens of
thousands of violent protesters. "The information we had was that there
was going to be over 50,000 people," Diaz said, "and the statements and
the e-mails that we all reviewed indicated that they were coming into
Miami to create havoc and to create property damage and that people were
going to get hurt. And we have to do whatever we can to protect the
citizens of Miami."
Loughner: "So when over 110 protesters are injured by police, you don't consider that 'getting hurt'?"
Diaz: "Well, I don't know what the number is, but obviously when
something like that happens, people are going to get hurt, and that's
unfortunate. But the question again to me is, 'Who is the guilty party?'
Were it not for those people who professed to come into our city for
the sole purpose of creating that kind of a problem, there would not be a
police presence out there. And it seems to me that's where we ought to
start focusing our energies."
Loughner mentioned her complaint before the CIP. "They threatened
to break my thumbs in order to try and get my name, sir," she said.
Diaz: "Well, that's unfortunate, but that's what this independent
panel is for. They'll do their investigation and whatever comes out will
come out. It's a very transparent investigation. They have subpoena
power. The elected officials and the chief and everybody is on board to
look at what happened and make any kind of changes that need to be
made."
Loughner: "Would that include [firing] the police chief if he was found culpable?"
Diaz: "Well, I don't think that's going to happen."
Loughner: "Nonetheless, if he was."
Diaz: "Again you're diverting your attention to the wrong focus.
You guys have it in for the chief. I think the chief did an excellent
job and I support him."
Loughner: "Thank you."
The woman who calls herself Bork chose not to dog Mayor Diaz last
month when she returned to Miami for her trial. Instead she turned her
attention to a new target: the conditions at the Miami-Dade County men's
jail (1321 NW Thirteenth St.) and the women's jail (1401 NW Seventh
Ave.). After the judge threw out her case, Loughner spent several days
interviewing men and women as they exited the facilities. "This is one
of the worst jails I've seen in my life!" a guy named Paul told her one
morning. "There's people sleeping right where you urinate.... They give
blankets but they never wash them!"
"I can break it down to one word: horrific!" offered a man named
Artie. "It's cold in there! There's urine and shit all over the place."
Loughner recruited several young FTAA protesters to continue taking
testimonials outside the jails as part of a new activist group she's
calling the Miami Prisoners Solidarity Network. "We're taking on the
prison system," she declares, adding that she'll be coming back to town,
maybe even permanently: "In a few months I might move down here. I
guess Timoney really will regret arresting me."
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