ACLU CHALLENGES THE "MIAMI MODEL"

The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida (ACLU) announced that it has today filed three lawsuits charging that officers of the Miami, Miami-Dade and Broward police departments used excessive force to intimidate and unlawfully arrest innocent bystanders and protesters who were exercising their free speech rights during the November 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) ministerial meetings in downtown Miami.

The three lawsuits filed today – on the two-year anniversary of the FTAA summit – are on behalf of a former Miami New Times reporter, four labor union members and a college student from Massachusetts whose skull was fractured after police hit him in the head three times with a baton. All six ACLU plaintiffs were arrested on November 20, 2003, during marches that resulted in hundreds of arrests after police used unnecessary force to disperse crowds.

“The ‘Miami Model’ was a police tactic designed to intimidate political demonstrators, silence dissent, and criminalize protest against the government policies,” said ACLU Greater Miami Chapter President Terry Coble, referring to the City of Miami’s law enforcement strategy during the FTAA meetings. “If this type of police action is allowed to continue, our country will have lost one of our most basic rights, and we will be on the road to a totalitarian government.”

The ACLU noted that despite the overwhelmingly peaceful nature of those gathered to protest at the FTAA, “…police officers arrested approximately 300 people, most of them for minor offenses such as disorderly conduct and failure to obey a lawful command. Hundreds of people were held in local jails for more than 24 hours. The charges against virtually all of those who were arrested were later dismissed.”

According to the AFL-CIO during the FTAA Week, protestors were subjected to an unprecedented show of intimidation, harassment and abuse at the direction of top Miami police officials. Fundamental civil liberties were trampled, and public safety was put at risk, in order to send a clear political message: peaceful protest against the FTAA is not welcome in Miami, Florida.

Top Miami police officials did everything they could says the labor organization, to silence union members, retirees, and members of the public who wanted to speak out against the FTAA. They convinced the City of Miami to pass an ordinance limiting free speech just a week before the FTAA Ministerial began - the ordinance has since been criticized by a Federal Court, and the city has promised to repeal it now that the FTAA protests are over.

During the day of the permitted rally and march against the FTAA, police leadership deployed thousands of cops, many in full riot gear, with an array of helicopters, weapons and water cannons outside the amphitheater where the FTAA rally was to take place. Four out of five union and retiree buses were never allowed to reach the site of the march and rally, despite promises to the contrary from top police officials. Police authorities prevented thousands of peaceful protestors from entering the amphitheater where the FTAA rally was occurring.

The ACLU says, “Working under the overall command of Miami Police Chief John Timoney, officers from the City of Miami, Miami-Dade County and the Broward Sheriff’s Office made extensive plans to militarize the police force in an attempt to limit demonstrations. According to news reports, police officers from more than three dozen law enforcement agencies converged on downtown Miami to create an almost surreal backdrop that included armored vehicles on the ground and helicopters dotting the skyline above. The police marched in lines wearing full riot gear and wielding batons, tear gas, pepper spray and beanbag rifles to control the crowds of demonstrators.”

Plaintiffs include Celeste Fraser Delgado, then a New Times reporter who was arrested while covering the demonstrations and jailed overnight. She was later released; a charge of failing to obey a lawful command was dropped.

''When I showed them my credentials, that I was a member of the press, they told me to put my hands behind my back,'' Delgado said Thursday. ``I placed my badge and notebook in front of me and they cuffed my hands so tight. I was lying there for more than an hour.''

The second case involves Edward Owaki, then a 19-year-old college freshman at the University of Amherst in Massachusetts. Owaki was participating in a demonstration when an officer hit his head with a baton three times, fracturing Owaki's skull, according to the lawsuit. Owaki spent a night in jail, then nine days in intensive care at Jackson Memorial hospital, the suit claims.

Lorne Battiste, a member of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and United Steelworkers members Laura Winter, Ricky Hamblin and Luis Cardona said they were arrested while following police orders to disperse.

Winter stated at an ACLU news conference today. “The police used intimidation and fear to basically shut us up. When I asked them why they were arresting us, they replied that they were simply following orders and proceeded to handcuff me and force me face down into the grass. At that moment, it felt like I had no rights; they had complete power to suspend my rights for the sake of what they called ‘security,’ but in reality they were the ones causing all of the violence and problems.”

The ACLU alleges in all three lawsuits that the actions of City of Miami, Miami-Dade and Broward Sheriff’s officers violated the rights of demonstrators, specifically the First Amendment right barring the government from unreasonably interfering with people’s rights to engage in political demonstrations and other expressive activities, and the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits the police from using unreasonable and excessive force.

“Despite the pride that Mayor Manny Diaz and Police Chief John Timoney have taken in the ‘Miami Model,’ trampling on the constitutional rights of demonstrators in order to make downtown peaceful during the FTAA meetings was not a successful police operation,” said Howard Simon, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. “Police officers failed to fulfill law enforcement’s two equally important duties – ensuring the safety of the community and at the same time protecting everyone’s constitutional rights. As a result, taxpayers in several South Florida communities will now be required to compensate people from around the country for the violation of their constitutional rights.”

The Miami Model, according to the AFL-CIO calls for authorities to foment irrational fears about peaceful political protest in order to legitimize suppression of our rights. This climate of panic enables top police officials to harass and intimidate protestors and sympathetic members of the public through profiling, random stops, and pre-emptive arrests; to neutralize protestors by isolating them from the public and shielding their intended political audience from them; and to punish protestors through unwarranted and indiscriminate use of force, mass arrests, and mistreatment in jail. These tactics are designed to discourage ordinary Americans from exercising their Constitutional rights to free speech and free assembly.

Even the stodgy old labor AFL-CIO has said these tactics are part of a larger strategy of the Bush Administration to chill political dissent and stifle civil liberties here in America. Anti-Bush demonstrators are caged in "free speech zones," the FBI is using expanded powers to profile those who protest Bush's foreign policies, while national security is invoked to roll back workers' rights. Sources: ACLU, AFL-CIO, Miami Herald, Florida Sun-Sentinel