Threat assessment - Keeping Current

In the late afternoon of Nov. 7, hundreds gathered on the west side of the Madison Street Bridge in preparation for a march protesting the Transatlantic Business Dialogue Conference. Helicopters hovered overhead as hundreds of Chicago police officers, in some places three rows deep, flanked the crowd of union members, anti-war demonstrators, faith-based activists and self-proclaimed anarchists.

The march ended peacefully two hours later, with just four minor arrests. And, in its aftermath, the police presence led some community activists to question the priorities of city leaders.

"Most [protesters] had the perspective that the city was going to do everything possible to protect the CEOs," said march organizer Moises Zavala of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.

"We live here; we pay taxes here; why aren't you protecting us the way you're protecting businessmen? I've got to be a white, middle-age guy in a suit in order to get some police protection," said Denise Dixon, a member of the Illinois chapter of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

The conference protest was Dixon's second that day. Earlier, she and her neighbors demanded more police vigilance as they marched at West 63rd Street and South Western Avenue. She lives in West Englewood, where 98 percent of the residents are black and the median household income is $26,693.

There appeared to be more police officers at the march, on the conference's first day, than the estimated 1,000 demonstrators. Police wouldn't give an exact count of the officers present.

But a police spokesman responded by saying the showing was necessary because of smashed shop windows, overturned cars and other street violence at similar conferences in Seattle and Prague, Czech Republic. Police had also received a tip that a small number of protesters were planning similar trouble here.

"Let me make clear that I'm not talking about 99 percent of the people who came here to protest," said David Bayless, the Chicago Police Department's director of news affairs. "I'm talking about a few key individuals."

"We received information that there was going to be an effort to use this meeting as a reason to bring harm to the city and its property," he said.

Still, the department doesn't use an "equation" to assign officers to such events, Bayless said. "It's a threat assessment based on the potential for violence."

Officers are assigned to a police district based on its population, geography, amount of crime and type of crime, said Bayless. "We direct our resources to where problems are taking place."

Police need the community's help to keep neighborhoods safe, and people who have concerns should attend beat meetings, he added. The police, in turn, can request the help of specialized units, including the Narcotic and Gang Investigation Section.

"We're doing everything we can to ensure communities feel safe," he said.

Dixon said she has attended beat meetings in the past but no longer does because she doesn't think they are effective--and she thinks many others agree. "We have lost faith in them," she said.

"At that march, they spent $1.6 million," said Ginny Goldman, lead organizer for Illinois ACORN. "A beat officer that you find at a CAPS meeting is not going to be able to decide to send $1.6 million to Englewood."

COPYRIGHT 2002 Community Renewal Society
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