A LOOK AHEAD * Demonstrators who took to Seattle and Washington, D.C., streets have L.A. . . . Bracing for Protests at Democratic Convention

With images of the disruptive protests during meetings of the World Trade Organization in Seattle and World Bank in Washington, D.C., still fresh in their minds, law enforcement authorities in Los Angeles are quietly launching a full-scale mobilization in preparation for this summer’s Democratic convention.

Local and national activists, too, are mobilizing for what some are dubbing “the Battle of Los Angeles,” emboldened by their successes in winning international media attention while disrupting the economic summits on both coasts.

Both sides say they hope peace will prevail when Democratic leaders meet Aug. 14-17 at Staples Center to nominate Al Gore as the party’s standard-bearer in the November presidential election.

But, just in case, both sides also are preparing for the worst.

The Los Angeles Police Department, the FBI, the Secret Service and a host of other local, state and federal law enforcement agencies have been working together for months to forge a cohesive response plan in case protests get out of hand.

Authorities are gathering and sharing intelligence on activist and protest groups, with particular attention to the possibility of more serious attacks, such as bombings and biochemical terrorism, officials said in interviews last week.

“There’s a message that needs to be sent, and that is that the law enforcement community in Los Angeles will be prepared to deal with any civil unrest or any other incidents that may occur,” said Special Agent James V. DeSarno Jr., assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office.

Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks added: “Certainly, we have to have contingency plans for any potentiality.”

Activists, meanwhile, are putting out the call for protesters to flood the downtown area around Staples Center during the convention.

Some already have enlisted a network of lawyers to defend their right to protest in the streets rather than in a designated “demonstration area” planned by city officials and the Democratic National Committee, and to bail them out of jail, if they are arrested.

“The Constitution is not set aside for the week the Democrats are in town,” said Jim Lafferty, executive director of the Los Angeles office of the National Lawyers Guild.

Even if they are entirely peaceful, the demonstrations could give Los Angeles a black eye because activists want to showcase the city as “Exhibit A” in their case against economic globalization.

“L.A. is a good reflection of the injustices of the global economy,” said activist Leone Hankey, “because L.A. is one of the most globalized cities in the world.”

As was the case in Washington and Seattle, protesters are expected to come by the thousands to proclaim their views about everything from world economic policies and labor issues to environmental degradation.

Because it is a political convention, they are expected to join the crowd: politicians, delegates, 15,000 media representatives and the usual assortment of fringe groups, hate groups, activists of all stripes and counterdemonstrators.

In preparation, authorities must balance their need to gather intelligence on potential troublemakers with individuals’ right to freedom of association and from improper invasion of their privacy.

Once the convention gets underway, front-line police officers must walk another thin line: balancing protesters’ 1st Amendment rights to assemble with the rights of others to pursue their lives and work in the areas around the convention.

In Seattle last fall, as many as 45,000 demonstrators converged on the downtown area where World Trade Organization delegates were meeting. Some protesters taunted police and went on vandalism rampages, causing more than $15 million in damage. Ultimately, scenes of rioting, looting and police brutality were broadcast worldwide.

The Seattle police chief resigned soon after the protests, and the department concluded earlier this month that it was unprepared to deal with a “well-trained and equipped adversary” that used the Internet, cell phones and walkie-talkies to marshal troops.

In contrast, when protesters tried to shut down the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings in the U.S. Capitol last week, authorities more tightly controlled the situation by shutting down surrounding streets and telling government employees to stay home.

The Washington, D.C., Police Department was successful, authorities say, because it mounted a large and visible show of force. It also staged preemptive strikes, arresting hundreds of activists and shutting down their headquarters for alleged fire safety violations--a tactic that drew sharp criticism from demonstrators and civil libertarians.

LAPD Seeks Lessons in Washington, Seattle

The LAPD has studied both cities’ experiences carefully, Parks said. It sent six representatives from its patrol and special response units to Washington to monitor the police activity firsthand, and to report back on what lessons can be learned.

“Ideally, we’d shut down the buildings and block the streets like they did in D.C. [and have] a closed environment,” said LAPD Cmdr. Thomas W. Lorenzen, commanding officer of the DNC 2000 planning group. “We can’t do that” because businesses would complain.

“And that makes it a real problem,” he said.

In fact, the LAPD already has sent letters to many protest groups asking them to demonstrate in a city-designated staging area on the north side of Olympic Boulevard between Georgia and Francisco streets.

Demonstrators will be required to sign up for space at the protest site, and will then be given a specific time to protest based on a lottery system, Lorenzen said.

Many activists reject that idea and say they will go to court to fight for access to the delegates entering and leaving the arena, as well as to the television cameras there.

“The protest pit is like a prison,” said organizer Margaret Prescod, head of the Every Mother Is a Working Mother Network, a local activist group. “Protest pit” is the activists’ favorite term for the city-designated demonstration zone.

Street protests are just one of the many security issues confronting the LAPD and other law enforcement agencies. Authorities say they have been meeting for much of the past year. And, Parks said, “We plan to ramp it up a couple of notches as things get closer.” He added that the LAPD also is working with both the Los Angeles city and county emergency operations groups.

Parks and other LAPD officials would not say how many officers will be assigned to the convention detail, or what tactics will be used to handle demonstrators. He said the department will provide officers special training in handling civil disobedience.

During the week of the convention, all LAPD officers are to work 12-hour shifts, with no vacations or time off allowed. The overtime alone is expected to cost the city $1.5 million a day, Lorenzen said.

If protests get out of hand, the police will have at least two 60-member squads of county sheriff’s deputies on standby to assist by providing VIP security and help in booking arrestees, said Sheriff’s Capt. Michael Kenyon of the department’s Risk Management Bureau.

If things were to escalate beyond the force’s control, the LAPD and Sheriff Lee Baca could activate the California Law Enforcement Mutual Aid system, through which other local authorities would lend a hand, followed by sworn officers from surrounding counties and finally from the state and the National Guard, if needed.

“But I don’t see that happening,” said Assistant Chief Stan Roberts, mutual aid coordinator for the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, Law Enforcement Branch.

While the LAPD handles the streets in and around Staples Center, the Secret Service will coordinate security for President Bill Clinton, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Vice President Gore, his wife, Tipper, and other select dignitaries as they move from the convention site to any of the 200 other related functions throughout Southern California.

“We don’t just come with the protectee in a motorcade,” said Frank O’Donnell, special agent in charge of the L.A. field office. “We come ahead of time and secure the site and work with the local police.”

Monitoring Groups Suspected of Vandalism

Securing Staples Center, for example, will mean taking out nearby newspaper boxes and mailboxes and securing manhole covers so they can’t be used to hide explosive devices, O’Donnell said.

The LAPD, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are intensifying their efforts to monitor the protest groups that were active in Seattle and Washington, especially those that committed acts of vandalism.

And although authorities say they have no indication of any terrorist plots targeting the convention, the FBI is readying its first-ever locally based emergency strike team, based in Los Angeles. That group is capable of coordinating a multi-agency response to bombings and biochemical attacks. The LAPD has similar response teams, Lorenzen said, but he would not discuss them.

Activists last week were just returning to their homes from the Washington protests, nursing bruises and jet lag and only beginning to hammer out plans for Los Angeles. It is so early in the organizing that that trademark of millennial activism--a Web site--is not up yet.

Organizers say they will be coordinating with their counterparts in Philadelphia, where the Republican convention in July is also expected to be hit by tens of thousands of protesters. A meeting in May is planned between the Philadelphia and Los Angeles organizers.

One thing is clear, they say: D2KLA--their shorthand for the convention protests--will be very different from the two earlier protests.

It will occur against a backdrop of rallies for gay rights and more liberal immigration policies and against the death penalty. A march demanding a halt to the planned execution of onetime radio host Mumia Abu Jamal already is scheduled for the day before the convention opens.

“In Seattle it was the WTO. In D.C., the World Bank and IMF,” said Lisa Fithian of the Direct Action Network, a key organizer of the protests. “The conventions are much broader. . . . We’re going to see a lot of different people in Los Angeles doing a lot of different things.”

And activists say they expect a visibly different crowd in Los Angeles.

“We want to make sure that the issues of all of the various people of Los Angeles are visible in the protest,” said Prescod. “It really will be connecting the local and the global.”

Los Angeles organizers have already pulled together about 150 local groups, ranging from the Bus Riders Union to the AIDS activist group ACT UP to groups organized against police brutality and welfare reform, which will join with national organizations for the protests.

Although the plans are not fully formed, organizers say it is unlikely they will try to shut down the Democratic convention, as they tried to close down the IMF meetings in Washington and successfully disrupted the WTO meetings in Seattle last year.

“We probably won’t call for a shutdown of the convention,” said Brett Doran, director of the Action Resource Center, “but there’ll probably be a call for mass civil disobedience.”

Activists are also girding for confrontations with the LAPD. Mindful of the department’s history of aggressive crowd-control tactics, organizers are recruiting “observers”--along with their attorneys--to watch police behavior during the convention.

In fact, activists say, they hope to make the Los Angeles Police Department an issue in their demonstrations. “The police need to understand we’re not afraid,” Fithian said. “The LAPD may find themselves the focus of our organizing.”

Lafferty of the lawyers guild said he fears that if the LAPD tries to choke off protests, it could cause problems.

“Where the cops in D.C. respected the right to speak there was no trouble,” he said.