Council meeting gets nasty

By Jennifer Dixon

May 30, 2000

DETROIT, Michigan (UPS) -- In a fight that was nearly as raucous as the protests they are trying to prevent, members of the Detroit City Council voted Friday to prohibit demonstrators from wearing gas masks and hoods during next month's meeting of the Organization of American States in Windsor.

The Detroit Police Department had sought the ban as part of a package of emergency ordinances designed to prevent protests in Windsor and Detroit from turning violent and destructive.

According to documents provided to the council, the City of Detroit said it has information that "groups or individuals may attempt to disrupt, interfere with or shut down the OAS assembly ...by intimidating, threatening, abusing, harassing or injuring persons, and by ...unlawfully damaging or destroying private and public property."

The OAS, an organization of 35 countries in North, Central and South America, will meet June 4-6.

Critics say the OAS is considering a hemispheric trade agreement that would put free trade over the needs of communities, workers and the environment.

To gear up for the protesters' arrival, Mayor Dennis Archer and Detroit police officials asked the council to prohibit the use of tents and sleeping bags on public property between June 1-7. They also wanted council to prohibit possession of ammonia, chlorine bleach, pepper spray, squirt bottles, urine and feces from any species, vegetable oil and wrist rockets, in and around downtown.

The council rejected those measures, but agreed to restrictions on masks and hoods in an area bounded by the Detroit River and East and West Grand Boulevard, as well as a ban on putting fuel in portable containers.

The votes capped an especially fervent debate, as some council members questioned making it a misdemeanor to carry a bottle of vegetable oil or a squirt bottle.

Councilwomen Sheila Cockrel and Maryann Mahaffey accused the police of trying to take away people's constitutional rights.

"You want to get them out and get tough, and that's not the American way. You are trying to keep people away," Cockrel said.

Said Mahaffey: "The kids who wear their pants low, is that going to be enough to do it? What if someone has asthma and they wear a mask? Is that going to be enough to arrest them?"

Police Cmdr. Micheal Falvo said the city was trying to protect police from being blinded by balloons filled with chlorine bleach.

After the vote, Mahaffey repeated that her opposition was on constitutional grounds. Councilwoman Kay Everett turned to her angrily and shouted: "You tell that to an officer that gets chlorine in the face!"

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