For most of 2012, the Republican National Convention was the biggest story in the Tampa Bay area. Concerns regarding protesters (or "anarchists," as Mayor Bob Buckhorn often described some of them) led to long discussions at City Hall and throughout the city, ultimately resulting in a local ordinance dictating behavior in much of downtown that stunned some observers who believed it was far too repressive.
City officials insisted that they were only preparing for the possibilities of what other convention host towns had to contend with, saying they were getting ready for the worst but hoping for the best.
The result? Perhaps it depends on your perspective. There were only two arrests, and Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor, Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee and other law enforcement officials were almost universally praised for their flexible stances in dealing with protests, including accolades from activists who traveled across the country to demonstrate.
But the heavy police presence was considered by many to be excessive and intimidating, stifling free expression and killing the chance for local businesses to make money from delegates due to the massive security that some said made the city look like a war zone.
Tuesday night, Stetson University College of Law's Tampa campus hosted an ACLU-led forum that reviewed how the city handled the protesters. Assistant Tampa Police Chief John Bennett said a challenge for his department was to take the after-action reports from other host convention cities, as well as the federal planning template used for National Special Security Events by the Secret Service, and come up with Tampa's own plan.
"Sometimes you do have to reinvent the wheel," he admitted, saying later in the evening that Tampa might have done just that for future convention cities' law enforcement agencies.
This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2012.