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From CBS 4 Denver.

A judge has rejected a request for Denver to list how many police officers would be needed to staff potential routes for protest marches around the Democratic National Convention.

Groups planning protests had sought the information as part of a lawsuit challenging a designated public demonstration zone and route for marches during the convention Aug. 25-28. They say the zone and route will not be within earshot or view of delegates attending events at the Pepsi Center and Invesco Field at Mile High. Glenn Spagnuolo of the Recreate 68 Alliance says it’s not close enough for the first amendment.

“They’re putting us in the far corner of the lot, over two football fields in length away from the entrance of this building, on the other side of these massive tents that are being erected,” Spagnuolo said. “Unless you have some kind of superhuman sight and super human hearing, you’re not going to see or hear that a protest is even occurring at this location.”

City Councilman Charlie Brown disagrees.

“It’s 50,000 square feet,” he said. “They will be allowed to use bull horns, which I’m certain they will, and so we think it does meet the sight and sound criteria.”

The city says protesters will also have the opportunity to approach delegates in the city on the sidewalks and during other public functions. The groups who want access to delegates at the Pepsi Center say that’s not good enough.

The groups argued that knowing staffing plans would help answer whether more officers would be needed if protest or parade areas were moved.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Kathleen Tafoya said Tuesday that some requests were not relevant to the lawsuit and said there were safety concerns. Denver had argued that releasing officers’ staffing plans could allow someone to plan to overwhelm forces.

Arguments on the lawsuit are set to be heard July 29.

Separately Tuesday, anti-abortion groups asked City Attorney David Fine whether they could conduct a prayer vigil at the Pepsi Center on Aug. 23. They threatened to file a lawsuit if Denver does not respond.

Fine said public sidewalks would be open Saturday for a vigil and that he was continuing to talk with the groups.

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From 9News.

A little more than a month out from the Democratic National Convention, city leaders are anticipating the worst-case-scenario, when it comes to protestors.

“We have to plan for the worst and hope for the best,” said Councilman Charlie Brown (R - 6th District).

With that in mind, the council’s Safety Committee met to discuss an ordinance that would prohibit protestors from bringing certain items to demonstrations.

Those items include locking devices like handcuffs and padlocks and other things like pipes or containers filled with concrete. These items are named because police say they can be used to link demonstrators together to block public roads. They, along with deadly weapons and “noxious substances,” which are also named in the ordinance, are also prohibited from being used in a way that would prevent police from dispersing crowds.

People who have permits to carry a gun would not be prohibited by this ordinance, according to Denver Police Chief Gerald Whitman.

Simply possessing the items would not be a crime. Instead, the police would have to have reason to believe that the person possessing the items has the intent to break the law in one of the above-mentioned ways.

“A patrol officer or someone observing something has to make some determination of what is this to be used for,” said Denver Manager of Safety Al LaCabe.

Current Denver law mandates that police cannot charge a person until those objects are used in a manner which breaks the law. This ordinance allows police to take action beforehand.

“What we’re attempting to do is to be able to stop something, hopefully, before it begins,” LaCabe said.

A representative from the group Recreate ‘68, which plans to demonstrate during the Democratic National Convention, thinks that the most of the up to 20,000 protestors will abide the law. He questioned, though, the merits behind the ordinance.

“This is spin. This is propaganda. Plain and simple,” said Glen Spagnuolo.

Proponents of the ordinances have cited stories of protestors using human waste to deter police.

Referring to conversations in regarding a similar ordinance which passed the first stage in Centennial Monday night, Spagnuolo added: “This traveling sideshow is going around to all these communities trying to scare people into thinking that what’s going to happen here is so vile and so disgusting that you shouldn’t be a part of it.”

Police who encounter people who they believe have the intent of committing wrongdoings with the prohibited items have three options: confiscate the objects, issue a citation or arrest the person in question.

Officials say police, though, must demonstrate probable cause before charging anyone. If passed into law, the measure would be punishable by up to a $999 fine and up to one year in jail.

Denver City Council members will have their first official reading of the ordinance on Monday, July 28. The second reading, which will also include a public hearing and a final vote, will be held on August 4.

If passed, the ordinance would become city law: meaning it would be enforced well beyond the Democratic National Convention.

The full ordinance reads as follows:

Sec. 38-125. OBSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT PROHIBITED

1. It shall be unlawful for any person, other than governmental employees in the performance of their duty, to possess any tool, object, instrument or other article adapted, designed or intended to be used for obstructing the public’s ability to freely move about on roadways, sidewalks or any other area to which the public or a substantial group of the public has access or for inhibiting emergency equipment from being moved without impediment or delay, with the intent to use the object by itself or in combination with other objects for obstructing the public’s ability to freely move about on roadways, sidewalks or into or out of buildings or for inhibiting emergency equipment from being moved without impediment or delay. This shall include but is not limited to any sections of pipe or containers filled with or wrapped in weighted material such as concrete and/or containing handcuffs, chains, carabiners, padlocks or other locking devices.

2. It shall be unlawful for any person to possess any noxious substance or dangerous or deadly weapon as defined in DRMC Section 38-117 with the intent to use the noxious substance or dangerous or deadly weapon for defeating crowd dispersal measures.

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Glenn Spagnuolo was on the Tom Martino Show yesterday morning.  You can download audio here.

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Click on the image for a printable .pdf.

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Glenn Spagnuolo and Tom Mestnik were on the Peter Boyles Show this morning.  You can download audio here and here.

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From 9News.

You don’t bring a squirt gun filled with human urine to a First Amendment party. That’s the message the Arapahoe County Sheriff brought to the Centennial City Council on Monday night.

Sheriff Grayson Robinson is in favor of a new ordinance that he says is about public safety. It would bar protestors from carrying items such as metal wiring, wooden clubs, slingshots, gas masks, and squirt guns within demonstration areas.

“This ordinance, if you choose to pass it, is truly a public safety ordinance,” said Robinson.

He worries that any of those items could be used against officers trying to make sure the demonstrations are peaceful.

“This is a Super Soaker,” said Robinson, holding up a large squirt gun. “Some people that have been bent on causing harm have filled this with, again, human urine and then have sprayed this on peace officers and firefighters.”

Protestors say it only serves to demonize them and that’s why one showed up at the meeting holding a devil’s pitchfork.

“That plants a thought in the common citizen’s head like, ‘Oh these free speech advocates are wacko. They’re going to be squirting the police and the public with urine.’ That is propaganda,” said Tom Mestnik from Recreate ‘68, a group that is planning large protests during the DNC.

Many protestors say the ordinance is simply unnecessary.

“Those tactics aren’t going to be used in Denver and are definitely not going to be used in Centennial,” said Tim Simons with Unconventional Denver.

The Centennial City Council passed the ordinance on its first reading on Monday night. The issue will now go in front of a public hearing on Aug. 4th.

Some city council members remain concerned that the ordinance might go too far. Robinson says there is no evidence protestors intend of coming into Centennial during the convention, but he says it doesn’t hurt to be prepared for every potential situation.

“If I see that there’s what I believe to be a public safety gap and I don’t at least engage in that public discussion, then I don’t think I’ve conducted my business responsibly,” said Robinson.

Arapahoe County has already passed a similar ordinance. Some of the hotels where delegates are expected to stay in are in the county.

Many ordinances like this are being heard all over the metro area.

Denver City Council will start listening to its proposals this week.

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Glenn Spagnuolo was on the Peter Boyles Show this morning.  You can download audio here.

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From USA TODAY.

Denver’s plans will keep protesters out of sight and out of earshot.

The delegates who’ll wave signs, speak their minds and nominate a presidential candidate at the Democratic National Convention next month in Denver will be treated by the city like royalty. But the people who want to wave signs, speak their minds and demonstrate outside the convention hall have already gotten a taste of Denver’s hospitality. They’re being treated like a bunch of pests.

City officials stalled for months after the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado sought information about convention plans. The city responded only after several groups sued, and then with a plan that treats free speech like the flu. Anyone showing symptoms will be isolated, particularly from delegates.

A February promise from Mayor John Hickenlooper that at least one designated parade route would end “within sight and sound of the convention site” was essentially abandoned. The route now ends several blocks away, and parades must end one hour before convention sessions begin.

Meanwhile, demonstrators who want to be near the hall, where their message can be heard and seen, will be confined to a “demonstration zone” surrounded by mesh wire and concrete barriers. It is about two football fields from the hall’s main entrances. It looks as if the delegates would need superhuman powers to see or hear the marchers. Which seems to be precisely the idea.

It is all a very strange fit for a political convention in a nation where people prize nothing quite as much as their freedom to speak their minds, particularly about politicians. Their right to do so is enshrined in the Constitution’s First Amendment, along with a right to assemble and protest.

Particularly since 9/11, the stated reason for pushing protests far from the action has been security, a valid concern. Unstated is that neither political party wants a repeat of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, where anti-war protests turned into melees with police, and the televised turmoil helped doom the party’s ticket. A little common sense could strike an appropriate balance.

Instead, host cities use security and far less valid issues as excuses to squelch speech. In 2004, New York City declared Central Park off limits to two huge demonstrations. One concern? That protesters might tear up the park’s sprawling Great Lawn. The same year, Boston reached a new low: For the Democratic convention, it set up what’s best described as a cage for protesters, under railroad tracks and covered by razor wire. A federal judge called it “grim, mean and oppressive.”

This summer, St. Paul is doing a bit better: Marchers will be able to get within 84 feet of the Republican National Convention, but they must end the parade by midafternoon. Teresa Nelson of the ACLU of Minnesota says, “We have a permit to march to an empty building.”

At least they’ll get closer than the folks in Colorado, where Nita Gonzales, a Denver native and longtime organizer, says the city is merely paying “lip service to civil liberties.”

Both cities’ leaders need a remedial course in American values. In 2004, in the face of Boston’s oppressive rules, U.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock put it well when he wrote that protesters “are not meddling interlopers. … They are participants in our democratic life.” It’s tough to participate when you’re behind a fence and blocks away from where you can be seen and heard.

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From CBS4 Denver.

Denver leaders are racing to pass a bill aimed at protecting people from protestors at the Democratic National Convention. The proposal bans demonstrators from having certain items. City leaders call it a “very restrictive,” but limited ordinance.

“Someone could literally shutdown the convention if they had the right tools,” says Doug Linkhart, the chairman of the City Council’s Safety Committee.

Linkhart says the proposed bill came directly from the Mayor’s Office. It would make it illegal to carry any tool, object, or instrument that can be used to obstruct roadways, sidewalks, or the entrances of buildings. This includes chains, quick setting cement, padlocks, handcuffs and other locking devices.

“We’re simply saying you can’t have those in a protest or on site if we can prove you’re intending to use them,” Linkhart says.

The proposed bill would also make it illegal to possess any noxious substance, such as human waste.

Denver leader’s researched events in the past like the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle in 1999 where protestors blocked major intersections and prevented delegates from leaving their hotels.

“All this talk about urine and feces, things like this being included in the ordinance, it’s completely ridiculous,” Gary Spagnuolo, spokesperson for Recreate 68 said. Recreate 68 protested in Seattle and plan to have a massive presence at the DNC.

City leaders hope the proposed bill would ensure a more peaceful convention. Linkhart says the police department wanted to also ban gas masks and bullet proof vests, but the council looked into those items as defense items.

Next Wednesday the bill goes to the committee, and then Monday, August 4, the council will open it for public discussion.

Last month Arapahoe County passed an ordinance banning specific weapons. Next Monday the Centennial City Council hopes to pass a similar ordinance.

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