Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Police request surprises activist
Organizer says she was asked to identify groups planning to protest Bush's visit
By FRANK GEARY
REVIEW-JOURNAL
What a police captain described as standard procedure, a grass-roots political organizer said was aimed at identifying hundreds of demonstrators expected to protest President Bush's policies during a Las Vegas visit today.
Peggy Maze Johnson, executive director of the anti-Yucca Mountain organization Citizen Alert, said she was surprised when a representative of the Metropolitan Police Department's Homeland Security Division asked her last week to identify groups that plan to protest Bush's visit.
The request came amidst national press reports about an Oct. 15 FBI anti-terrorism memo that instructs local law-enforcement officials to monitor possible protests and report any "potentially illegal" activity to the FBI.
Maze Johnson said she typically discloses to police the number of people expected to attend a protest and the activities planned, but police have never before asked her to identify organizations expected at a demonstration.
"I never had any fear that what I was doing was bad or wrong, or that it would put me or my family at risk," she said Monday. "Now, I do feel at risk. It's like all of a sudden they're watching me."
Police Capt. Mike McClary, who oversees Homeland Security, said it's common for police to try to identify groups that may attend a protest and that the practice has gone on for years.
It's necessary so police can determine how many protesters to expect and to devote police resources accordingly, McClary said.
"This is common practice when we know we will have a planned event," he said. "There is no sinister attempt to do whatever."
Maze Johnson was asked to identify other groups so leaders of those organizations could be asked the number of protesters each group expected to attend today's demonstration outside a fund-raiser at The Venetian, McClary said.
However, Maze Johnson said the police representative who contacted her last week explained that the groups' identities were needed because some protesters are known to engage in unlawful activities. For example, Maze Johnson said, she was told that militant environmental groups set trees on fire during protests.
McClary acknowledged a staff member made those comments, but would only say the department always has sought the same type of information.
