Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000 10:24:46 -0400
From: Chuck0 <chuck-AT-tao.ca>
Subject: A16-DC: Police Chief's Heavy-Handed Tactics And Slick Talk No Surprise, 


Police Chief's Heavy-Handed Tactics And Slick Talk No Surprise, Say
Activists 
by Christine Geovanis, DC Independent Media Cent 1:22am Wed Apr 19 '00 
hammerhard-AT-aol.com 

Washington DC Metro police chief Charles Ramsey developed  and refined
the suppression of political dissent four years ago, at the 1996 Chicago
Democratic Convention, according to Chicago opponents of police
brutality. They call last weekend's heavy-handed and illegal police
activity during Washington anti-IMF/World Bank demonstrations
'predictable.'

Police Chief's Heavy-Handed Tactics And Slick Talk No Surprise, Say
Chicago Activists
By Christine Geovanis, DC Independent Media Center, HammerHard
MediaWorks/Chicago

April 18, 2000

Washington DC Metro police chief Charles Ramsey developed -- and refined
-- his approach to suppressing political dissent four years ago, at the
1996 Chicago Democratic Convention, according to Chicago opponents of
police brutality. And they charge that it’s predictable that the DC
police engaged in some of the same kind of heavy-handed and illegal
activity during last weekend's demonstrations against the IMF and World
Bank.

"The paramilitary-styled police strikes against organizing centers and
demonstrators in Washington DC are the same sort of attack strategy
Ramsey used four years ago to shut down public protest at the DNC," says
Chicago activist Dick Reilly of Neighbors Against Police Brutality. "We
consistently saw this kind of crap from him when he was deputy commander
of the Chicago police department -- and predictably, we saw it again
during the anti-World Bank/IMF demonstrations."

Reilly, who worked as a medical volunteer in Washington last weekend,
reports that medics treated scores of people seriously injured by
police, including one press photographer who sustained head injuries in
a beating and another Agence France reporter who was pepper sprayed.
Medics also report that dozens of demonstrators were sprayed, beaten and
abused in unprovoked police attacks on the streets. 

"Disruption, attacks on gathering spaces, harassment, preemptive
arrests, street closures, beatings, the illegal abridgement of
constitutional rights -- this is classic police policy for Ramsey," says
Reilly. "And predictably, we saw plenty of heavy-handed police activity
– including the use of disabling chemical agents and maximum force –
during the demonstrations Sunday and Monday, as well. The problem Ramsey
and his masters had this weekend is that those strategies just don't
work against dissent staged by autonomous, solidly organized affinity
groups."

Ramsey was a key architect of the 1996 'protest pit' strategy in
Chicago, which relied on deploying cops in riot gear, police horses,
heavy equipment and barricades to block all access points to the DNC
convention center. The strategy included confining demonstrators to
several fenced-in parking lots six blocks from the site -- effectively
shutting out alternative voices during the convention. In addition,
Ramsey shaped DNC police strategy on the streets, which included police
spying, illegal raids on gathering sites, routine harassment and arrest
of suspected protesters in public spaces, destruction of activists'
video and film, and a consistent refusal to grant march permits --
forcing protesters to the courts to fight for the right to peacefully
assemble. 

At the time,Ramsey and the Chicago police justified the strategy by
arguing it ensured 'public safety' -- and would help prevent a repeat of
the debacle 28 years earlier, when police rioted during the 1968
Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The strategy earned Ramsey
accolades from both the Clinton administration and local media. But
while the Chicago police won praise from the mainstream press for their
'restraint' in 1996, the courts have consistently ruled that they
illegally abridged activists' right to protest -- months after police
had successfully shut down marches and demonstrations.

In addition, Ramsey drew fire in Chicago for his involvement in CAPS --
the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy –- a program he promoted
widely and eloquently as a method to 'unite' police and civilians in
strategies to fight crime. But the program had already begun to draw
fire from police accountability activists before Ramsey left Chicago to
assume his current post as DC Metro police chief.

"CAPS is a joke -- and Ramsey served as its number one comedian," says
Gwen Hogan of Family of Victims, a Chicago community group that helps
families whose loved ones have been murdered by police. 

"After CAPS was created, police murders went up, not down," charges
Hogan. "And when you went to a CAPS meeting, the cops either ignored
you, disrespected you, or tried to recruit you as an informer. Groups
like the Chicago Alliance for Neighborhood Safety -- which worked with
the cops to create CAPS -- have been very critical of the program. It's
been a total failure."

Chicago activists also believe that Ramsey's recruitment of Terry
Gainer, a former director of the Illinois State Police whose family has
close ties to the Chicago police, suggests that he's committed to
importing Chicago's long history of police repression to Washington.
Gainer currently serves as Ramsey’s deputy police chief, and he was a
highly visible counterpart to Ramsey on the barricades and at press
events in the last week. 

But concerns about Gainer seemed to be realized this Monday, when
WTOP-AM reported that he had told Black officers at the police
barricades that protesters could try to ‘provoke’ them by invoking the
“N-word” against them – a highly dubious assertion given the explicitly
anti-racist platform of the protesters. Activists have suggested that
Gainer, who is white, was employing classic race-baiting tactics with
his own officers.

That’s not surprising, say Chicago observers, given that the Illinois
State Police has been plagued with charges of racial profiling and
targeting of minorities over the years, including under Gainer’s
leadership. Last year the courts rebuffed ACLU charges of racial
profiling against the state police, but lawyers have vowed to continue
to document the problem and press the judiciary for redress.

Activists have also raised concerns about police intelligence work and
disinformation tactics during the World Bank/IMF protests – including
the wholesale denial that any incidents of police abuse occurred.
Chicago observers note that during Ramsey’s tenure in Chicago,
‘counter-intelligence’ styled police tactics – known as COINTELPRO
programs in federal law enforcement parlance – thrived in the city.
Strategies employed by the police included political spying, extensive
disinformation campaigns – often in collaboration with sympathetic local
reporters – and the use of informants and police agents to act as agent
provocateurs in targeted groups.

"Chicago police illegally spied on – and sometimes used agent
provocateurs against -- thousands of political activists beginning in
the 1960's, particularly non-Anglo groups like the Black Panther Party
and the Young Lords," says Emile Schepers of the Chicago Committee to
Defend the Bill of Rights. "But they also spied on housewives, clergy --
anyone identified as a political dissident. The Chicago Red Squad, as
the project was called, was one of the largest local law enforcement
counter-intelligence programs of its kind in the country – and police
tactics were so abusive that ultimately the courts forced the city to
sign a consent decree barring politically motivated police spying.
Recent court cases suggest that these illegal practices have continued,
but Ramsey eagerly joined other command level officers in lobbying to
destroy the Red Squad Consent Decree that the courts used to outlaw
these actions. That suggests that Ramsey has little respect for laws
that protect constitutional rights – and based on Mr. Gainer’s
provocative remarks to Black officers, it appears that he shares Mr.
Ramsey’s basic philosophies."

Gwen Hogan is more blunt. "Ramsey's great at soundbites and loves the
cameras," says Hogan. "But his root philosophy -- use maximum force and
deny everything, including basic rights -- is rotten to the core. I feel
sorry for DC residents. They got a raw deal when he was hired to run
their police department."

http://dc2.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=1551

-- 
<< Chuck0 >>

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