Something similar happened in November, when some 10,000 union members and retirees demonstrated at a free-trade summit in Miami. They were met by 2,500 cops brandishing new crowd-control weaponry, paid for in part by a little-noticed $8.5 million appropriation tacked onto the Iraqi reconstruction bill. Videos taken at the scene show nonviolent protesters being beaten with wooden clubs, shocked with Taser guns, shot in the back with rubber bullets and pepper-sprayed in the face.

"For a brief period in time, Miami lived under martial law," concluded a scathing report on police misconduct issued by a local panel charged with investigating the debacle. "Civil rights were trampled, and the sociopolitical values we hold most dear were undermined."

Since the free-trade summit protests, activists have come to refer to a militarized response to protest as the Miami model -- and it's a model that other police forces have studied. Lt. Bill Schwartz, a spokesman for the Miami Police Department, said that law enforcement officials from Georgia and New York traveled to Miami during the free-trade summit to learn tactics for dealing with upcoming protests in their cities. Georgia was getting ready for the G-8 summit in June, which brought together the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia. And New York, of course, was preparing for the RNC.

Upon his return from Miami, Bill Hitchens, director of Georgia's Department of Homeland Security, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "We need to do much the same as they did."

They certainly tried. In May, shortly before the G-8 economic summit was scheduled to take place on Sea Island in Georgia, the state's Republican governor declared a state of emergency, citing a danger from "unlawful assemblages." That enabled him to call out the National Guard, flooding the streets with soldiers in full camouflage. Protesters who tried to attend a candlelight peace vigil had to pass through a checkpoint manned by armed troops.

There probably won't be soldiers on the streets of New York, although, according to a February New York Daily News story, convention planners have discussed the possibility. But there will be a massive police presence, with 8,000 officers providing security around Madison Square at all times. According to Vallone, the NYPD has received $50 million in federal money to prepare for the convention, and $18 million is being used "for the latest in crowd-control devices," including nonlethal weaponry and "high-tech video surveillance devices."

Overseeing it all will be the Secret Service, which is in charge of the convention site. Under Bush, the Secret Service has proved particularly hostile to protest. They often set up "free-speech zones" to corral demonstrators far from the president, and they ask local police to arrest anyone who strays from the designated areas.

In October 2002, South Carolina activist Brett Bursey was arrested for trespassing when he waded into a crowd of Bush supporters waiting to greet the president and held up a "no war for oil" sign. On July 4 this year, police say, the Secret Service directed them to arrest a couple for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts at a presidential speech in West Virginia -- despite the fact that the speech was open to the public.

The NYPD doesn't need much encouragement to shunt protesters aside. The department has attempted to control demonstrations against the war in Iraq by using interlocking metal barriers to create pens around groups of demonstrators, making it difficult to get in or out. The New York Civil Liberties Union sued to stop the practice, but on July 19 a federal judge ruled that police can continue to use the pens as long as they make it easier for protesters to enter and exit.

The city's security plan provides for a "designated protest area" on the southwest corner of Madison Square Garden. Those who want to protest the convention legally will be confined to this corner and probably sealed off in pens flanked by deep walls of men in blue. All of this has alarmed local Democratic politicians, many of whom are planning to take to the streets with the demonstrators.

"I am very concerned that activities during the Republican Convention will be silenced or pushed out of the way, supposedly for the 'comfort' of those participating at the convention," State Assemblyman Richard Gottfried said in a statement. "Our civil rights cannot be sacrificed for political purposes."

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