-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [ALAOIF:327] FBI, Police "visit" Denver anarchists and protesters Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 12:24:09 -0600 From: Mary Ann Meyers <ljmmam at hypermall.net> Reply-To: alaoif at ala.org To: ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom List <alaoif at ala.org>
URL: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3061282,00.html
Warnings precede party conventions FBI, police visits to young people rile ACLU official
By Karen Abbott, Rocky Mountain News July 24, 2004
Law enforcement officers visited several Denver young people Thursday to warn them against committing violence at the Democratic and Republican national conventions.
"This is part of an ongoing FBI investigation with the Joint Terrorism Task Force," Colorado FBI spokeswoman Monique Kelson said Friday. "That's all that we can comment right now."
The Joint Terrorism Task Force includes officers from local law enforcement agencies.
Mark Silverstein, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Colorado, said young people living at two locations in Denver reported the visits to the ACLU and that similar visits have occurred elsewhere in the United States in recent days.
He said officers told the Denver young people that they were visiting "protesters and anarchists."
"It's an abuse of power, designed to intimidate these kids from exercising their constitutional right to protest government policies and associate with others who want to protest government policies," Silverstein said.
Denver police public information officers referred inquiries to the FBI on Friday night.
Sarah Bardwell, 21, said six officers arrived about 4:30 p.m. Thursday at the Denver home she shares with four other young people. Two houseguests also were there, she said.
The six officers identified themselves as four FBI agents and two Denver police officers, but declined to give their names after the young people declined to give theirs, Bardwell said.
One officer said he took the young people's refusal to give their names as "noncooperation" and said he would have to use "more intrusive efforts to get his job done," Bardwell said.
"We had really no idea what was going on," she said.
"They told us in a joking way that they were doing community outreach and getting to know the neighbors," she said.
Then the officers said they were "doing some preventative measures and investigating," she said.
She said the officers asked three questions: Are you planning to be involved in any criminal acts at the national conventions? Do you know anybody who is? Are you aware that if you assist or know anybody planning any criminal acts and do not report them, it's a crime?
"We declined to answer," Bardwell said.
She said she refused to answer on principle, not because she's hiding anything. She said she doesn't plan to attend either party's national convention.
"I would normally be completely open," Bardwell said.
Silverstein said law enforcement officers made a similar visit to another Denver home, occupied by four or five young people.
Bardwell said she and her housemates believe they were visited because they have participated in protests in the past - including one the day before against the recent shooting death of a 63-year-old disabled man by a Denver police officer who was looking for someone else and mistook a soda can the man was holding for a gun.
Other causes in which she has been active include protests against Columbus Day as a celebration of oppression of native people, work with an organization that collects food donated by grocery stores for homeless people and anti-war protests, Bardwell said.
She is an intern with the American Friends Service Committee, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in the 1940s for its work against violence. AFSC also advocates for prisoners' rights.
"I think it was an intimidation tactic and it was designed to threaten people who are analyzing our current government and its policies and the system in the United States - an intimidation tactic that is used to crush any form of resistance or dissent or public expression of disapproval," Bardwell said.
She said the visit from law enforcement officers motivated her to learn more about her rights and to be "even more active in my community."
abbottk at RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5188
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