SAVANNAH — The paltry number of protesters at the G-8 summit last month was even smaller than originally estimated — because as many as one in nine were actually undercover cops.
During a speech Monday to Georgia police chiefs in Savannah, a state official revealed that as many as 40 undercover narcotics officers dressed as demonstrators to keep tabs on summit protests.
"The Secret Service accused me, the first time they saw some of them in the Multi-Agency Command Center, of bringing protesters into the MACC," said Georgia Homeland Security Director Bill Hitchens. "They blended right in."
Hitchens showed slides of cops in ballcaps, T-shirts and shorts carrying handheld camcorders and said the officers took classes on how to pass as protesters before the June 8-10 world leaders summit.
When President Bush met with leaders of the world's industrialized democracies at Sea Island, 80 miles south of Savannah, it was estimated only 350 protesters showed up. Several thousand had been expected.
Only 15 protesters were arrested on the final day when demonstrators blocked the causeway linking Sea Island to the mainland.
The undercover cops, split into four teams of eight to 10 officers, also had access to a database of digital photos to identify potentially violent demonstrators, Hitchens said.
"Everybody in this country that was involved in anarchist movements, the leadership and anybody who had been tagged for being involved in violent demonstrations before, they had pictures of every one of them," he said.
Carol Bass of the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition, one of the G-8 protest organizers, said protesters suspected police would try to infiltrate their demonstrations. Keeping photographic records of demonstrators is more troubling, she said.
"Anybody who wants to change the policies of their government is basically turned into a very bad person in a database where all the police have is their pictures," Bass said.
The undercover officers were among 11,056 police and security forces, including 4,800 National Guard troops, sent by state and local agencies to the summit, Hitchens said.
His G-8 presentation at a Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police conference was the first time officials have given specific numbers of police and National Guard troops used to guard summit venues near Sea Island and Savannah, where international delegates and reporters stayed.
The federal government has not said how many security officers it sent to the G-8. Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue estimated months before the summit that 20,000 from federal, state and local agencies would be used.
Congress budgeted $35 million to pay for mobilizing the National Guard as well as police overtime, meals, lodging and equipment.
"Our expectation at this juncture is that we're going to be able to pay for everything that was incurred," Hitchens said.
Glynn County Police Chief Matt Doering told the group that security officials overreached when they posted signs declaring the 7-mile causeway linking Sea Island to the mainland was off-limits to pedestrians.
Doering said his department had no authority to ban pedestrians as long as they weren't blocking traffic.
"A lot of people including the Secret Service and State Patrol assumed ... that the causeway was closed to pedestrians," Doering said. "Even though signs were actually posted, well, legally it wasn't."
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/0704/27protesters.html