Policy Recommendation

First Amendment Zones

Eloy L. Nuñez, PhD. Saint Leo University

The city of Tampa, Florida was selected to host the Republican National Convention (RNC) in 2012. This

is good news for the local economy, but for local law enforcement it means a lot hard work ahead.

Fortunately, for the Tampa Police Department, large-scale special event planning is old hat. A

competent and battle tested command staff under Chief Jane Castor, Assistant Chief of Operations John

Bennett and Assistant Chief of Investigations & Support Marc Hamlin have already planned and

executed large-scale special events such as Super Bowl XLIII in 2009. The RNC is a different type of

event, at a different location, but the core planning principles are the same.

For this article I interviewed Assistant Chief Hamlin about the planning for the RNC and the Super Bowl.

The interview focused on the establishment of buffer zone security for the event venues, and specifically

on the designation of “First Amendment” zones. I will discuss what he told me later in the article, but

first I will give you a little background of my experience with large-scale special events planning and my

personal involvement with the establishment of First Amendment zones.

First Amendment Zones? Isn’t the Entire U.S. a First Amendment Zone?

The year was 1995, and I had just been promoted to the rank of lieutenant in the Miami-Dade Police

Department (MDPD). No sooner had I been promoted and transferred to the Cutler Ridge District, than I

had been ordered to attend a week-long SERT training course. It was in that training course that I first

heard the term “First Amendment zone.”

SERT, which stands for Special Event Response Team was conceived in 1994 and came about as the

result of an ugly incident at Miami International Airport (MIA) in which pro-Castro and anti-Castro

supporters confronted each other in a fracas that was televised live by several local news stations.

Apparently, insufficient measures had been taken by the police department to separate the antagonist

parties from one another.

That televised fracas involved several MDPD Airport District police officers who tried to intervene in the

fight between the two antagonist parties. There were no injuries of significance, but this incident

resulted in an embarrassment for the Department, and led to a public outcry that resulted in the re-

assignment of the District Commander and its Executive Officer. Another thing that came about as a

direct result of this incident was the creation of the SERT concept as a tactic to maintain order in

situations involving protestors from opposing sides. In this incident, the Airport District officers had

been caught flat footed and were not ready to deal with an incident such as this one. SERT was

conceived as a way to address a glaring process need (Drucker, 2002) in the MDPD.

Before SERT there were field forces. Miami-Dade Police had attained a national reputation for having

innovated the Mobile Field Force (MFF) concept in reaction to the fiasco of the 1980 “McDuffie” Riot in

Liberty City. The three days of rioting was in reaction to the killing of a black man Arthur McDuffie by

white police officers, and the resulting not-guilty verdict of those officers. The riots resulted in 18

deaths and over 180 serious injuries. The damage caused by the rioting was estimated at $100 million

and was thought to have caused the permanent loss of over 3,000 jobs in the black communities of

Miami (Driscoll, 2005). Morale among the rank and file of both major police departments in the County

were at an all-time low.

In the aftermath of the McDuffie riots, the Miami-Dade Police Department (back then called the Public

Safety Department), sustained a huge blow to its reputation. The Department had been caught by

surprise by the scope and severity of the rioting. The passive strategy of perimeterizing the affected

areas and letting the neighborhoods burn to the ground was seen by many as a total capitulation and an

abrogation of the police department’s responsibility to maintain the peace.

The commonality in both the 1980 McDuffie riot and in the 1994 MIA fiasco, is that something good

came out of something bad. In both cases, innovation was driven by bad publicity and the realization

that there existed a huge gap in performance. Both incidents exposed weaknesses that had existed

undetected for years. Weaknesses that needed immediate attention. The guru of innovation Peter

Drucker (2002) would describe this as incongruities between “what is” and “what ought to be.”

In both cases, the “what was” was not acceptable. The McDuffie riots led to the innovation of the

Mobile Field Force concept. This was a concept that was later put to test in the field during the 1982

Luis Alvarez riots and the 1989 Lozano riots in the Liberty City and Overtown areas. Then there was the

Elian Gonzalez civil disturbance in April 2000. In all three of these civil disturbances the mobile field

forces of the Miami Police Department and the Miami-Dade Police Department performed superbly.

Yet as the MIA incident exposed, something was needed to address “low grade” incidents where

generally peaceful protestors from opposing sides were in the proximity of one another. Regular

uniformed patrol officers assigned to a special detail seemed insufficient to deal with this type of

incident. Yet, a full-fledged mobile field force, garbed in riot gear and equipped with a variety of less

that lethal munitions seemed to be an overreaction, and an unnecessary provocation on the part of the

police. Surely, a solution somewhere in the middle could be found. That is where the idea of the SERT

teams was born. I call this the Goldilocks solution. Not too heavy handed like a field force, but not

sorely understaffed and unprepared like a bunch of uniformed police officers thrown together at the last

minute to respond to an abortion clinic protest or an airport-like clash between pro and anti Castro

Cubans. The SERT teams were just right… the right solution for the right problem.

I am not sure exactly whose idea SERT was. I do not think it can be attributed to any single individual. It

was probably a combined effort of a group of several MDPD mid-managers… lieutenants, captains, and

majors. However, one person stands out among the others. The person who I consider as being the

Father of SERT, more than any other single individual, is Lieutenant Michael Gruen, who is now retired,

but at the time was assigned to the Special Events Unit of MDPD. Lieutenant Gruen not only played a

key role in the formulation of the concept, but also designed the lesson plan for the original one-week

training course, and personally instructed most of the blocs of the course.

It was in the SERT course that I first heard Lieutenant Gruen refer to the term “First Amendment zone.”

My first thought when I heard this term was “isn’t the entire U.S. a First Amendment zone?” Of course

it is… and the thought of the police designating a small area as a First Amendment zone seemed to be

contrived, ridiculous and plain silly. Perhaps the term “First Amendment zone” is not the best descriptor

of what these pre-designated areas are.

According to Gruen, the First Amendment zones were areas that the police would designate ahead of

time for protestors to gather and demonstrate peacefully. These zones were not intended to preclude

peaceful demonstrations from occurring in other places. However, the thinking was if the police

provided a safe location for protestors, the protestors would likely assemble at these locations. In other

words, like the line in the movie Field of Dreams, “if you build it, they will come.” Whether the

protestors would actually come or not to the field that you built was the question. This concept

sounded good on paper, but at the time it had not yet been tested in the field.

The idea behind First Amendment zones intrigued me. One of the things that I liked about it right away

was that it often involved the meeting of adversarial stakeholder groups ahead of time to hash out the

ground rules. The designation of these zones was not an arbitrary decision made by the police alone. It

was a decision usually made by a “give-and-take” process between several stakeholders in meetings

held days or weeks ahead of time. I liked the idea of adversaries meeting ahead of time to discuss the

rules. I have always been a proponent of planning as a way to mitigate chaos, uncertainty, and

complexity. The idea is simple: the more that is planned ahead of time, the fewer the surprises that will

be encountered later.

SERT is Tested in the Field

Within a week or two after completing the SERT training, I was told by my captain at Cutler Ridge District

that I had been selected to command a SERT operation for a Columbian festival at Tropical Park, which

was located in another district. I was told that I was selected for this special detail because I was one of

the brightest students in the SERT class, based on the recommendation of Lieutenant Gruen. While I

should have been flattered by that compliment, I knew that the real reason was that I was newly

promoted and therefore I was the low man on the lieutenant’s seniority list. Throw the new guy into

the fray and see how well he does. That was the real reason, because there were plenty of other bright

students in the SERT class other than me.

Planning for the Columbian festival started only a day before the event. Lieutenant Gruen was by my

side the entire time… answering my questions and being a mentor for me. Several years earlier, this

festival had erupted into a melee involving dozens of people fighting at the park. The police officers at

the scene of that incident did not respond in a timely manner and in sufficient force to contain the

disturbance, which spilled over across Bird Road into a shopping center. I remember the incident

because I was a sergeant of the patrol squad that responded from the adjacent Doral District to assist

the embattled Kendall District officers on the scene. That day I recall arriving at Tropical Park with my

squad and watching a free-for-all involving several hundred people and MDPD officers. Within an hour,

enough officers from adjacent districts arrived to quell the disturbance. A field force of Florida Highway

Patrol (FHP) troopers arrived and assembled across the street in the shopping center, but by that time,

most of the troublemakers had been arrested and the rest of the crowd had been dispersed.

That was the memory and mind-set that I had going into the planning for the SERT operation for the

latest Columbian festival. I knew that to avoid the same problems as before, we had to have a highly

visible show of force, but not with a provocative MFF. A SERT team of regular uniformed officers

seemed like the right tool for this particular problem.

For this event, we had received information of a possible protest by opposing Cuban groups (again pro-

Castro and anti-Castro). Just like we had learned in the SERT class, Lieutenant Gruen and I met with the

leaders of both groups the day before the event. We discussed issues and exchanged our expectation

with one another. Like a referee in a boxing match, the rules were explained to both sides, and their

questions were answered. It was clear that these two groups did not like each other very much, but it

was also clear that neither of them wanted to go to jail or cause a disturbance that would bring negative

publicity to their cause. For this event at least, the leaders of the three stakeholders (MDPD, pro-Castro,

and anti-Castro) shared the same goal. The trick now was to impart that message to the participants

from each side. Easier said than done. In a highly emotionally charged situation such as this one, the

possibility of renegade actions by individuals cannot be discounted. After all, we were not dealing with

well disciplined organizations. These were loosely organized political groups of unwieldy and emotional

individuals.

Anyway, the day of the event came, and hardly any protestors showed up from either side. It all

seemed to be much ado about nothing, and the event went off without incident. Did we over-prepare?

Maybe… but I don’t think so. I would rather over-prepare than under-prepare.

Things went so well that a couple of weeks later, my captain at Cutler Ridge District told me that I had

been volunteered again to plan and lead another SERT detail. This time it was in support of Coral Gables

Police Department for a pre-planned protest between opposing parties at the Biltmore Hotel where

President Bill Clinton was making an appearance. As the junior lieutenant in the MDPD at the time, I

really had very little say on the matter, so I couldn’t really say no. Besides, in a weird way, I was starting

to actually enjoy these things. I didn’t know it at the time, but all these special details were preparing

me for much bigger and better things to come.

This time, most of the planning had been worked out by Lieutenant Gruen’s Special Events Unit ahead

of time. My involvement was limited to the actual command and execution of the event. The meetings

with the opposing groups of protestors had already been done and the ground rules had been

established. This time, one of the opposing groups consisted of a couple of hundred demonstrators

representing the pro-sugar growers industry that were bused in by the sugar company from Clewiston,

Florida. The opposing group was supposed to be an equal number of environmentalists who were

protesting the supposed infringement of the sugar industry into the delicate ecosystem of the Florida

Everglades. As it turned out, several bus-loads of pro-sugar demonstrators showed up, but only a

handful of environmentalist protestors came out to demonstrate.

Figure 1 illustrates the site of the pre-designated First Amendment zone, which was located on

Anastasia Avenue a block away from the Biltmore Hotel where the President was going to be. This

location was chosen because it offered the protestors a clear and direct view of the Biltmore Hotel, yet

was far enough to satisfy the concerns of the U.S. Secret Service agents that protect the President. In

this particular event, the stakeholders included MDPD, Coral Gables PD, the U.S. Secret Service, and the

two opposing protestor groups.

Figure 1 First Amendment Zone at the Biltmore Hotel

Figure 2 illustrates a close-up view of the physical setup of a stage on Anastasia Avenue, which was

closed to traffic for that day. Bicycle-style “French” barricades were erected in a configuration which

separated the two opposing groups, with a “no-man’s land” buffer zone in the middle. This buffer zone

in the middle would only be effective if the uniformed SERT officers were positioned in the middle to

dissuade any protestor from either side to cross over and attempt to provoke the other side. Figure 2

illustrates a not-to-scale diagram of the pro-sugar demonstrators on one side of the road (represented

by the smiley faces) and the opposing environmentalists on the other side of the road (represented by

the slash circles). The diamond shapes in the middle and around the stage area represent the

positioning of the SERT team officers. The dotted lines represent the barricades.

Figure 2 SERT Operation at the Biltmore Hotel

Not evident in this diagram is the Mobile Field Force which was staged at a park nearby and ready to go

if called upon. As it turned out, there was some insults exchanged between hecklers from both sides,

but no violent confrontations occurred. I think that the combination of barricades and plenty of

uniformed officers in between and all around had a dampening effect on any intended violence.

Moreover, these SERT officers had been trained to spot potential trouble makers early on, and to get up

close and personal by making eye contact and strike up conversations in order to deflate any

antagonistic emotions. I found that this technique works really well because it humanizes the contact

between the uniformed police officer and the protestor. This technique seems to have the

psychological effect of minimizing the perception of police officers as mindless, obedient robots,

working for the government. Learning to engage the protestors up close and personal creates a

dynamic in which the protestors are more likely to view the police as real people, and thus are less likely

to act aggressively against them.

The SERT operation at the Biltmore concluded without incident. After about an hour of demonstrating,

the well disciplined protestors from the sugar grower’s group filed into their awaiting buses and

returned to Clewiston. Likewise, the environmentalist protestors from the opposing side dispersed

without incident. The only damage noted was the litter left behind in this normally tranquil and upscale

residential Coral Gables neighborhood. Ironically, the litter was left strewn about on the

environmentalist side and not on the pro-sugar side. Once again, the SERT concept worked well. The

First Amendment zone seemed to be placed in a location that was just right. Not too close to the

President, and not too far so that the protestors felt that they were being prevented from exercising

their right to protest. The fact the Biltmore Hotel stood majestically several stories high and was highly

visible from the roadway made it a symbolic icon for the protestors to focus on. That attention to

imagery and symbolism was an important lesson for me that I would use later on in planning for other

events.

Two years later I was offered a position at the Special Patrol Bureau as the commander of the Bomb

Squad and the Critical Incident Management Unit (CIMU), and I got to work in the same office with my

mentor, Mike Gruen. It was in this capacity which I would play a very significant role as one of the

principal planners for the FTAA Conference in 2003, the Presidential Debates in 2004, and the Super

Bowl in 2007. In all three of these large-scale special events, the involvement of protestor groups was

anticipated, and First Amendment zones were planned for.

Interview With Tampa Assistant Chief Hamlin

I had initially contacted Assistant Chief of Operations John Bennett who had played an instrumental role

in the planning of the 2009 Super Bowl in Tampa to ask him questions regarding the designation of

buffer zones and First Amendment zones for the upcoming RNC convention in Tampa. Chief Bennett

referred me to Assistant Chief of Investigations & Support, Marc Hamlin who was equally involved in the

planning for the Super Bowl and who is in charge of the RNC planning. The interview with Chief Hamlin

was conducted over the telephone.

Chief Hamlin stated that the main venue for the RNC was at the St. Pete Times Forum in Downtown

Tampa. As such, the Tampa PD had been designated as the lead local agency for the event. The U.S.

Secret Service has been designated as the lead federal agency in charge of overall operations. As of yet,

a First Amendment zone has not been designated since the planning is still in its early stages. Chief

Hamlin stated that a committee for legal matters had been established and that meetings were being

held between his police department and stakeholder groups such as the ACLU in order to hash out the

factors used to determine the optimal location for the First Amendment zone. Obviously, the concerns

of all stakeholders have to be taken into account and the risks have to be weighed in relation to the

anticipated costs and potential benefits. Tradeoffs almost always have to be made by all involved

parties, but in the end a location that is suitable for all stakeholders can usually be accommodated for.

I was not surprised to hear Chief Hamlin telling me this since this is basically the same approach that we

took for the special events in Miami-Dade. Chief Hamlin was very familiar with the way Miami-Dade

Police approached the First Amendment zone issue since he had visited Miami-Dade during our planning

for the 2007 Super Bowl, much like we had visited the police agencies planning for the prior Super Bowls

in Detroit, Jacksonville, and again in Tampa in 2009. The fraternity in law enforcement calls for the

exchange of ideas between agencies. The core principles that work for one agency should work for

others. We continuously learn from one another’s experiences, and we adopt the best practices as our

own. In our conversation, Chief Hamlin brought up my ex-boss’s name, Major Louis Battle. That was

reassuring to me. When he mentioned Major Battle’s name, I instantly knew that Chief Hamlin was part

of a collegial and tightly knit fraternity of professionals.

During the interview I also asked Chief Hamlin a few questions regarding the buffer zone security for the

Raymond James Stadium venue. Unlike Dolphin Stadium in Miami-Dade, Raymond James Stadium poses

quite a challenge for securing a buffer zone since two roadways parallel the stadium on both the east

and west sides. I will leave most of his responses about the Super Bowl out of this article since it is a

sensitive subject. However, I can say that Chief Hamlin stated that no First Amendment zones were

designated for the Super Bowl since there were no indications that protest groups would show up for

the event. The rest the interview will remain in confidence.

Final Thoughts on First Amendment Zones

I am not an attorney and thus I will not get into the legal arguments concerning the establishment of

First Amendment (or buffer zones). These are ongoing issues that are examined by courts throughout

the nation and much of it is unsettled law. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on cases such as Madsen

v. Women's Health Center as they pertain to buffer zones and the protestors’ rights to free speech (Trey,

1994). Protests at abortion clinics are not the same thing as street riots in Seattle or Miami. Yet many

of the same core principles apply.

In the aftermath of the FTAA Conference civil disturbances in Miami, both the City of Miami and Miami-

Dade County governments were sued by a variety of special interest organizations. Organizations such

as the ACLU and Amnesty International were involved in those law suits and are likely to be players in

future litigation associated with the rights of protestors at large scale special events. As a planner of

operations with an understanding of the broader strategic issues of my police department, I was keenly

aware of who the litigants were likely to be. I am in complete agreement with the approach taken by

Assistant Chief Hamlin and his department. I believe that it is in the best interests of the police

departments to deal with these issues transparently and ahead of time. Many of the problems that can

lead to litigation later down the road can be mitigated if dealt with at the front end of the planning

process. That is why I think the Tampa Police Department is doing the right thing by including these

stakeholder groups in the planning process early on. This is a model that I think should be emulated by

other police agencies for planning future events.

References

Driscoll, A. (2005). The McDuffie Riots 25 Years Later. The Miami Herald. Retrieved on July 30, 2008,

from http://www.floridacdc.org/articles/050515-1.html

Drucker, P. (2002). The Discipline of Innovation (re-print of 1985 article). Harvard Business Review, 80(8), 95-103. Retrieved August 7, 2008, from Business Source Complete database.

Trey, J. S. (1994). Madsen v. Women's Health Center, Inc. Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics; Fall94, Vol.

22 Issue 3, p292, 2p. Retrieved on June 9, 2011, from

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=i3h&AN=9411112813&site=ehost-

live">Madsen v. Women's Health Center, Inc.</a>