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JOHNSON: Security gets a little carried away

By Bill Johnson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published August 22, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Icannot wait for next week to get here, although I cannot imagine it ever living up to the hype, fear and knee-shaking worry of this current one.

Now I am worried about getting carted off to jail.

My plan, you see, is to toss my bicycle into the back of the pickup every day for use in doing my job in cordoned-off areas of downtown during the convention.

But according to Point No. 9 of a "special bulletin" issued by Denver police last week, that makes me worthy of at least being followed or stopped, if not outright hauled in.

I just might be, according to this "First Responder Alert," taking my two-wheeler to a violent demonstrator cache or stockpile of bikes, which the alert informs are quite effective in blocking streets and sidewalks, even slowing down emergency vehicles.

It is all there, in black and white, Denver police asking all police, sheriff's, ambulance and fire personnel across Colorado to "be on the lookout for" 12 everyday items, from football helmets and nails to PVC pipes, that could be used next week to thwart law enforcement.

It is all just so over the top, and it seems bound to send even the most professional officer's imagination whirling - planting a seed that might trigger felony stops of everyone from the neighborhood plumber and handyman to the Little League baseball coach.

Indeed, if you are a baseball coach or league official, you might want to rethink collecting the gear from this past summer's season. Baseball chest protectors, No. 4 on the list, are also known to be used by violent demonstrators, according to the alert.

Need a case or a few coils of nails for that roofing job? You might want to put that on hold, too, until at least the Labor Day weekend because you could be, according to No. 5, be putting together a "caltrop," which DPD says "have been used for centuries as anti-personnel devices against foot soldiers."

And it is your backside, Mr. Plumber, if they catch you with 10- to 20-foot lengths of metal pipe or PVC tubing. No. 10 says you just might be constructing "sleeping dragons to block intersections and building entrances."

At a news conference Thursday, Mark Silverstein, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, decried the bulletin as bad policing, bad public policy and a waste of police resources.

It gets, he said, an already overly cautious police department even further "ramped up and worked up.

"It envisions a bomb-throwing Bolshevik on every bicycle. What we need in the coming week is cool heads."

He then introduced the first known person affected by the policy, a 25-year-old woman named Sarah Bardwell, of Denver, whose name might seem familiar, who last Friday morning was questioned by police while off-loading a pickup load of bricks at her home.

Sarah Bardwell was a principal figure in the Denver police spy files case of some four years ago, which came to light after she was questioned by the FBI and Denver police at her Lipan Street home about whether she planned to participate in violent and disruptive demonstrations at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. She never did.

The case, in which it was learned that police kept secret files on some 3,000 people and 200 groups, was later settled, with the city promising the ACLU it would severely restrict local intelligence- gathering operations.

Last Friday morning, though, a single Denver officer pulled in front of Sarah Bardwell's home and asked whether she was stockpiling the truckload of bricks for use during the convention.

The woman, who cooks meals for the Food Not Bombs organization that feeds homeless people in the city's parks, which was once on the FBI's list of subversive groups, said she told the officer to look at her home.

"They are for our very obviously decaying home," she told him.

The officer, who'd said he was responding to a neighbor's call, took one look, nodded and soon left, she said.

"Are you a terrorist?" Mark Silverstein later asked her.

"No," Sarah Bardwell replied. "I just want to fix my house." Asked if she thought she is still a target of law enforcement, she just shrugged.

I get what police are trying to do and trying to prevent. If all hell breaks loose next week, they are the first people I want in there protecting and saving me.

At the same time, I agree with Mark Silverstein and his assessment of the special bulletin, which he calls "extra, above and beyond. This has nothing to do with preventing terrorism. It is over the top."

For five days in the streets, in the heat and nastiness of hundreds of thousands of people clogging New York four years ago, I never once saw a chest protector, PVC or metal pipes, a shield or even one bicycle blocking the streets. I'd have swiped it.

True police work is one thing. All this bulletin does is give police unreasonable cause to stop and harass the law-abiding. Heading out of town to avoid next week's mess? Hide your auto club maps. Terrorists use them, too, you know.

Yes, it is that ridiculous.

If I am wrong and the streets next week are littered with nails, helmets, chaos and flames, I'll be the knucklehead lying next to the green bike.

If I am right, well, please just send bail money.

Comments

  • August 22, 2008

    11:04 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    vet64 writes:

    While you're asking questions, ask them why they just moved five mobile trailers to the Cherokee camp ground at Cherry Creek State Park? They moved in yesterday.

  • August 24, 2008

    2:10 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    Go_Buffs writes:

    vet64, five trailers huh? How about 500 Army troops in Park Hill. Oh and if you want to cross the campus of Johnson and Wales you'll need to get past the M-16 carrying soliders. My guess is they have to protect good cooking!

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