Protesters: Springs officials muted their rights

2003 demonstrators were kept far away from NATO delegates

By David Montero, Rocky Mountain News
July 6, 2005

Colorado Springs officials denied peace protesters their First Amendment rights in October 2003 when they were forced to picket blocks away from a NATO meeting, attorneys argued in federal court in Denver on Tuesday.

The Citizens for Peace in Space could have been easily accommodated with extra planning by police outside the Broadmoor Hotel where delegates from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization met, said attorney Mari Newman.

"It would not have compromised public safety," she said.

But Colorado Springs senior litigation attorney Thomas Marrese said the situation was "unique."

The delegates were a fractious band of international dignitaries including several defense secretaries meeting as the Iraq war was becoming increasingly unpopular overseas and terrorism threats on the government's color-coded chart were at high levels.

"It was a critical meeting at a critical time," Marrese said.

The NATO meeting featured about 1,000 delegates from 26 countries, and was the first large international gathering in Colorado Springs that had merited such high security concerns, the police department's deputy chief testified.

Deputy Chief Steve Liebowitz said his department had about 10 months lead time to prepare, and officers went through a litany of worst-case scenarios.

Using explosive blast radiuses and conducting background checks on everyone from media to hotel workers, he said protesters were a wild card that didn't need to be dealt with at the time.

Instead, he said he tried to work with the leadership of the anti-war group by offering alternative protest sites - namely a checkpoint on Lake Avenue where all vehicles entered the restricted zone.

But Bill Sulzman, the first witness to testify Tuesday and one of the six protesters suing the government, said the location chosen by police and city officials was so far away from the media and delegates that the protesters couldn't even see them.

When asked if he could see the place where his group had protested past space symposiums at the Broadmoor International Center, Sulzman said, "With a lot of imagination, yes."

The case, according to Newman, centers on the city's belief that convenience trumps free speech, and her co-counsel in the case, Edward Ramey, called a witness who testified that Colorado Springs officials didn't do enough to try to give the protesters a viable spot from which to demonstrate.

The witness, Robert Klotz, is a retired Washington, D.C., law enforcement official who said he didn't believe the group in this case constituted "a clear and present danger" to anyone at the conference site.

"Messages on signs don't damage people," he said.

But Marrese spent the better part of the afternoon trying to chip away at Klotz's credentials, claiming he had only three years of doing preparatory planning for protests and hammering him for consistently testifying in favor of protesters.

The trial continues today, with the city of Colorado Springs beginning its defense of the charges.