MIAMI, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- While Miami city officials and police are congratulating themselves for holding the line against protesters during trade talks last week, lawyers for the protesters are putting together a list of civil rights violations.
Kris Hermes of Miami Activist Defense says he can find multiple violations by police of four constitutional amendments.
He said several suits will be filed and he is calling for an investigation into police actions during talks creating a Free Trade Area of the Americas.
City officials had feared protesters would disrupt the talks and tear up the downtown area, much like the 1999 trade talks in Seattle that resulted in more than $2 million damage during days and nights of chaos.
The federal government allocated $8.5 million for security in Miami and local authorities chipped in more. That provided for six months of training for 2,500 officers and all the equipment they would need.
Police used rubber bullets, concussion grenades, tear gas, pepper spray, batons and their fists to control the crowds and move them where they wanted them to go.
There were 231 arrests -- 154 men and 77 women -- during the talks, the days leading up to them and the aftermath. Three police were injured, and 16 protesters were also hospitalized. More than a hundred more were treated at a treatment center run by the protesters.
Police said they did what they had to do, but no more.
"I thought the officers showed remarkable restraint," Police Chief John Timoney said. "These are outsiders coming to terrorize and vandalize our city."
Police displayed weapons they said were dropped on the ground, including bricks, rocks, metal pipes, the metal cover to a water sewer and a small fuel container filled with gas.
"What you don't see are the bottles of urine as well as the feces that they intended to throw," said Sgt. Denis Morales, a department spokesman.
"The work that was done this week was massive and it was done ethically, professionally," Miami Mayor Manny Diaz said at a news conference.
He said Timoney and his staff "put together something that was unprecedented."
Timoney is well known among the protesters. He was the Philadelphia police chief during the disturbances there during the 2000 Republican National Convention.
He resigned after that to take a job in the private sector, but returned to police duty last year as part of Diaz's effort to clean up the department.
Diaz had said during the week that the police effort during the FTAA talks was an example of how homeland security should be conducted.
Monday morning, Timoney and Diaz stood at an exit ramp from an interstate highway that runs through downtown Miami thanking merchants and residents for the patients last week, when the area was virtually shut down.
They held up signs saying "Thank You Miami" in English and Spanish.
"We're here to let them know we recognize the sacrifices that they made," Diaz said.
"A lot of us had to make sacrifices last week just to host this event. But certainly they bore the big brunt of the sacrifices. They shut down," he said.
The business owners are hoping that insurance will take care of their losses, but many are disgruntled and, like the protesters, claimed the police effort was overkill.
Two law firms said they spent $50,000 each to move their operations to other locations.
A University of Massachusetts freshman charged from his hospital bed Monday that he suffered a severe head injury at the hands of police Thursday morning but was jailed and received insufficient treatment.
He said he was denied treatment despite complaints of dizziness and vomiting spells.
Hermes said "there is real concern about the level of political repression. These people who by and large were attacked for political speech not for what they did."
He said violations of the First Amendment free speech rights were obvious, but there were violations to the Fourth Amendment search and seizure provisions, the Fifth Amendment for arrests for failing to reveal their identity and the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
"The Fourth Amendment violations were probably the most significant violations -- extensive stop and searches, and destruction of property and evidence," he said.
Hermes said it will take weeks or even months to get the lawsuits filed.
"It's still early in the process. There are still people in jail," Hermes said. "When it comes to putting together a lawsuit it will take a little time, but I can assure you it will take place."
"The mayor said it should be a model for homeland security and that's a very scary comment. There were rampant violations of human rights," he said.
