Police, Protesters Plan to Keep Peace

From opposite sides of a busy street, the protester and the police sergeant exchanged pleasantries last week.

“Take care,” called out anti-biotechnology activist Tom Ato as he waved to Sgt. Rebecca Bigbie.

“Are you finished?” inquired Bigbie, who had been observing a bit of street theater that Ato and others were staging outside a Trader Joe’s food market in Pacific Beach.

“For now,” said Ato, taking off his pig’s mask and tomato-fish costume.

“OK, be careful,” said Bigbie, a San Diego cop for 20 years.

As the exchange across Garnet Avenue suggests, a spirit of sweet reasonableness is in the air on the eve of what Ato and other activists are billing as a major mobilization of opponents to the spreading influence of the biotechnology industry.

After some initial saber-rattling, police and protesters are talking cooperation, not confrontation. Whether this detente will hold is anybody’s guess.

Thousands of activists are said to be coming to San Diego to join Ato and others in protests outside the Biotechnology Industry Organization convention that opens here Saturday and is expected to draw 12,000 biotech executives and researchers.

In 1996 San Diego police provided space and protection for thousands of demonstrators outside the Republican National Convention. There were no arrests and nary a confrontation.

But as violent protests at recent global economy conventions in Seattle and Quebec have shown, the tenor of street demonstrations is changing.

Unlike the protesters at the Republican convention, the anti-biotechnology groups have been unwilling to promise to stay in an authorized “protest zone.” Jaws are more tightly clenched these days.

Last month the Berkeley-based Ruckus Society hosted a highly publicized, weeklong Biojustice Action Camp in the rural area east of San Diego to teach activists the art of blocking intersections, resisting arrest without using violence and scaling buildings to unfurl banners.

San Diego police responded by allowing the media to watch and photograph training sessions of police officers in riot gear.

But in recent days both sides have taken a softer stance.

At a news conference outside City Hall, Biojustice organizers said all the talk of possible clashes between protesters and police has obscured the issues of corporate control of the food supply and risky tinkering with genetics.

“I’m a little bit agitated at being thrown into a clump with this 30-second [television] clip taken in Seattle,” of the violent protest outside the World Trade Organization meeting, said organizer Steph Scherer.

A Massive Show of Uniformed Strength

Still, the group said it cannot promise that there will not be people who feel moved to commit civil disobedience such as blocking streets in order to get their message heard.

“People who are coming here want to speak their mind,” said nonviolence trainer Sarah Seeds. “They’re going to do what they do. We can’t control them. This is not a group with a dictator.”

The San Diego police response is much like that of 1996: an attitude of friendliness and an offer to help the protesters get their message to the world, but backed by a massive show of uniformed strength and a vow to move immediately if laws are broken.

“We are going to be very aggressive as soon as we see a violation,” said police spokesman Dave Cohen. “We’re not going to play games.”

As a city dependent on tourism and conventions, San Diego is obsessive about its mellow, family-friendly image. Disorder in the streets is not good for business.

The budget for the Police Department’s biotech convention deployment is $2 million and rising, and not a peep has been heard from the normally penny-pinching City Council.

The department will not talk about how many officers will be patrolling the protest venues in the Gaslamp Quarter near the waterfront convention center.

A temporary jail is being erected. Suburban police agencies will be on standby in case San Diego needs reinforcements. The county Department of Animal Control is ready if protesters unleash animals.

And then there are the nunchakus, a martial arts weapon consisting of two 12-inch-long tubes of molded hard plastic connected by a three-inch cord. When applied to the arm of a detainee and twisted, the pain is immediate and excruciating.

Alone among big city police departments, the San Diego police issue nunchakus to their officers and authorize their use to coerce nonviolent protesters to stand and submit to arrest, a tactic known as “pain compliance.” In 1996 the nunchakus were credited with convincing antiabortion protesters not to blockade clinics.

“We’ve heard of pain compliance,” said protest organizer Scherer.