amNewYork - For NYPD, protests marked 'doomsday'

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For NYPD, protests marked 'doomsday'
BY ROCCO PARASCANDOLA
NEWSDAY STAFF WRITER

February 26, 2007

It is clear from recently released police documents that the NYPD was preparing for the 2004 Republican National Convention as if the world were about to end. One document called for a "doomsday" plan to deal with more than 5,000 arrests.

There were even suspicions that a man called "ShapeShifter" was in town to wreak havoc. A look at how police viewed ShapeShifter and other activists like him provides a window into the NYPD's concerns and preparations for the convention, which ended with more than 1,800 arrests, accusations that officers lost their cool and a barrage of litigation that is likely to shape how future demonstrations are policed.

ShapeShifter, for the record, is Terrence McGuckin. He's a layout artist for 2600, a computer hackers' quarterly. He came across the NYPD's radar after police conferred with their Philadelphia counterparts about the Republican convention held there in 2000.

McGuckin, then just 19, was arrested by Philadelphia police on misdemeanor charges and held on $500,000 bail. His offense? Using his cell phone as an "instrument of crime," apparently to encourage other protesters to block an intersection in front of the convention center.

The case, as you might imagine by now, wasn't what it was made out to be. A trial judge listened to the prosecution, then threw out most of the charges. McGuckin was found guilty of disorderly conduct and was sentenced to probation. He has since been counting the money he won in a lawsuit against the city of Philadelphia.

On the weekend of July 9, 2004, ShapeShifter slipped into the Hotel Pennsylvania -- right across Seventh Avenue from Madison Square Garden, where the convention would be held in less than two months -- and spoke at two panels, "Mischief and Mayhem at the RNC" and "RNC Scavenger Hunt," which were part of a hackers' conference.

Make a stink bomb, ShapeShifter told the gathering.

Arrange an appointment at a hair salon inside the RNC frozen zone.

Join the "Biotic Baking Brigade" and throw pies in people's faces.

A two-page memorandum about his speech, circulated two days later among the highest ranks of the NYPD, also makes mention of tossing ball bearings at the feet of police officers.

But ShapeShifter says when that was suggested by someone else, he advised against it.

"I would never advocate anything violent," McGuckin, now 26, said over the phone from Philadelphia, where he lives. Regardless, the idea that a magazine layout artist with a social conscience was going to bring the NYPD to its knees is quite a stretch.

Some of the concern, sources said, was generated by the simple fact that ShapeShifter had spoken right across the street from the Garden, almost as if the conference had been held at that hotel to taunt police.

Still, none of this should have overly worried the NYPD.

It was -- and is -- accustomed to protesters of all stripes, and had dealt with plenty of them previously and without widespread violence during the 2002 World Economic Forum, an event that in other cities had become a free-for-all.

The NYPD also had a dress rehearsal of sorts with the February 2003 antiwar rally near the United Nations. In a foreshadowing of confrontation that would occur during the GOP convention, there were voices of outrage then, with accusations that a number of protesters were roughed up by police or trampled by police horses. About 300 people were arrested that day, and while police say they acted appropriately, organizers say officers kept protesters penned in with barricades and turned many away from the First Avenue rally site.

That rally was very much in play in the months leading up to the RNC. A number of groups, most prominently the umbrella activist group United For Peace and Justice and the New York Civil Liberties Union, were telling police that those looking for trouble were in the slim minority.

Most protesters, the NYPD was being told, had legitimate gripes -- they opposed the war in Iraq and other Republican policies -- and planned to voice their dissent peacefully.

On March 11, for instance, the NYCLU said in a letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly that the NYPD's posture "can change the entire tenor of an event.

"If the department chooses to highlight potential disorder and conflict with police officers, law-abiding organizations are intimidated and many people of good will become fearful of attending the event," the group wrote. "Moreover, hostile statements from high-level officials about an event convey to officers who actually police the event an attitude that produces excessive and unnecessary conflict."

But the NYPD thought otherwise. It worried there could be "arrests in excess of 5,000 prisoners" during the convention, according to documents, with a number of facilities, including Downing Stadium on Randalls Island and Murry Bergtraum Field on South Street being considered to process those arrested.

On Aug. 31, the third full day of protests, the predicted became the reality, with more than 1,000 people arrested, mostly in Union Square and on Fulton Street.

Kelly that day said the efforts of officers helped thwart a number of "anti-RNC activities."

Protesters, meanwhile, said police lost control, using orange netting to scoop up people just passing by, and, in the case of mass arrests on Fulton Street, arresting 200 demonstrators who had been led to believe by police that they were not breaking the law.

"The NYPD's predictions of violence and mass arrests poisoned the atmosphere surrounding the convention protests," Chris Dunn, the NYCLU's associate legal director, said a few days ago. "And while those protests in fact were overwhelmingly lawful and peaceful, the prediction of mass arrests turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the department unlawfully arresting hundreds of people."

ShapeShifter was not one of them. He took part in the RNC protests but avoided any legal trouble. He was unaware that his speech had prompted such concern, though he suspected as much when he looked out at the audience in the Hotel Pennsylvania and quickly made those who didn't fit in.

"I could easily pick out the undercover police officers in the room," he says. "They were so obvious.

"They were wearing Grateful Dead shirts."