BSO officer apologizes for off-color comments about protesters on video

By Madeline Baró Diaz
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Aug. 12, 2006

The ranking Broward Sheriff's officer shown on a training tape in which deputies made fun of protesters at a free trade summit apologized Wednesday, but said his deputies did not violate department policy.

"The comments were inappropriate and unprofessional and I shouldn't have made them," Major John Brooks said during an interview at the Sheriff's Office headquarters in Fort Lauderdale. "I'm apologizing to the people being talked about, I'm apologizing to the BSO and to the public."

The tape that featured Brooks was a training video made during and after protests that took place during the 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in Miami. In the video, one deputy refers to the protesters as "scurrying cockroaches."

During the summit, police from agencies throughout South Florida dressed in riot gear and met the protesters with a show of force and non-lethal weapons.

A day after demonstrators clashed with police, the training tape captured Brooks discussing the confrontation with his riot gear-clad troops.

"I just keep thinking back on the events ... the rocks and chunks of bricks that were coming at us and all of a sudden you hear pop, pop, pop, pop, pop," he said on the tape, referring to the sound of guns firing rubber bullets and pepper spray pellets. "That weapon saved us a lot of injuries."

One deputy handed him a black cloth that could have been a hood or facemask "from one of the scurrying cockroaches," the deputy said, referring to the protesters.

"This is going in my office forever," Brooks replied, "and it's going to bring some very good memories."

One of the most striking moments captured on camera during the protests occurred when Miami attorney Elizabeth Ritter, in business attire with a red jacket, held a sign that said "Fear Totalitarianism" while standing in front of a row of police in riot gear. The officers opened fire with rubber bullets, hitting Ritter as she walked away from them. While she crouched behind her sign, a bullet hit her in the head. On the training tape, released to the media Wednesday, the deputies make fun of Ritter.

"You see that lady with the red dress?" said Sgt. Michael Kallman, addressing the hooting and cheering deputies. "I don't know who got her, but when it went through the sign it hit her smack dab in the middle of the head."

"Can I get a little piece of her red dress?" called a voice off camera.

Sheriff's spokesman Elliot Cohen said the tape was reviewed "a long time ago" and it was determined to have broken no department rules.

"There's a difference between violating department procedure and just being inappropriate," he said.

Ritter, who said she was protesting the fact that her hometown had become a "veritable police state" where even the courts were afraid to open during the protests, said she had not considered legal action until she saw the tape.

"I was appalled and shocked that they would be applauded and congratulated for that kind of egregious conduct against a citizen," she said. "It's going to take some form of civil rights action to help modify the training ... or the type of individual the Broward Sheriff's Office sees fit to employ as an officer of the law."

A report issued last week by Miami's Civilian Investigative Panel found that police didn't communicate well, made unreasonable arrests and used non-lethal weapons incorrectly while trying to control crowds during the protests. The report specifically mentioned the Ritter incident.

An attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, which is involved in several lawsuits stemming from alleged police abuses during the protests, was outraged when he saw the video.

"I think it's pretty shocking and I think it shows a disregard for basic civil liberties," said Ray Taseff, legal panel chairman for the Miami chapter of the ACLU. "It was more than insensitive. It was making light of someone who could have been very seriously injured."

Taseff said the fact that ranking officers participated in the jokes seems to endorse misconduct by officers.

The Miami Police Department, the lead agency in policing the protests, declined to comment Wednesday.
__________
Staff researcher Barbara Hijek contributed to this report.

Madeline Baró Diaz can be reached at [email protected] or 305-810-5007.