Shouldn't Denver learn the lessons taught by protester tactics utilized to create anarchy in other cities?

The laws proposed by the Denver Police Department are legitimate and necessary law enforcement tools to prevent anarchy in the streets of Denver during the DNC. The proposed prohibited protester equipment has no constitutionally protected communicative value.

A similar ordinance limiting protesters equipment in Los Angeles was already subjected to judicial scrutiny and upheld as a legitimate constitutional exercise of police power. Now, what is really significant is that the reviewing court that made that decision was none other than the most liberal known appellate court in the U.S. - the 9 th Circuit Court of Appeals!

In the past, protestors would attempt to "express themselves" by occupying a strategic location through the use of a tactic called a "sit-in". However cumbersome, police could simply pick up each protester individual and cart them off to jail.

The next development in protester tactics had the protesters handcuff themselves together or chain themselves to a fixed object. Police simply countered with bolt-cutters. The latest development in protester tactics now involves "lockdown devices", including a tool called a "Sleeping Dragon".

This device consists of multiple lengths of PVC pipe covered with chicken wire and concrete. Two protestors would reach into opposite ends of one pipe and lock their wrists together with handcuffs or carabineers. Now take 5-6 protestors with these devices and they would be virtually impossible to remove from any strategic location without considerable effort, and most importantly, a long amount of time.

Now, imagine that in Downtown Denver during the DNC, that at the very beginning of the commuter rush-hour, that these protestors march right by the DPD to a strategic location carrying unassembled parts of these Sleeping Dragons. DPD knows what their up to, but there are no legal grounds (under the current state of the law) for the police to take action.

Now, what if that the location is either a RTD bus station, a major intersection, such as (1) Speer Blvd. & Auraria Pkwy, (2) Colfax & Broadway, or (3) Speer Blvd. & Colfax, or entrances to the Pepsi Center, or all of them simultaneously? Let there be no doubt that such acts would bring anarchy into Downtown Denver, as the resulting gridlock would impact traffic in downtown for hours.

Of course, the liberal media has more concerns over the non-existent rights of radical liberal anarchists than the needs of the average Denver worker's need for law and order. Denver should create an exemption for protests at the Denver Newspaper Agency building. They could blockage their lobby and their Starbucks; can't you just hear the Editors' scream now, "No, not our Starbucks!"

"[I]n the late 1990s, the global-justice movement exploded with inspiring actions at trade summits and annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank -- most notably the shutdown of the 1999 World Trade Organization summit in Seattle. Many of these activists were veterans of earlier environmental campaigns. Not surprisingly, many of the tactics that had been made famous by earlier forest-defense campaigns appeared deep in the urban jungles -- only now activists were blocking traffic, not loggers. . . . . It would not be surprising to see significant use of lockdown tactics at major demonstrations in Washington, around corporate annual meetings and during the 2008 Democratic and Republican national conventions."

The Next Page: Hot trends in protest technology, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sunday, March 18, 2007, http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07077/770421-109.stm.