Page 44 - 082517

Groton Daily Independent
Friday, Aug. 25, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 056 ~ 44 of 65
“Investigations showed there was no link between the man and the terror threat,” police said in a state- ment Thursday night.
Dutch Counterterror Coordinator Dick Schoof commended the police action and left the country’s threat level unchanged at “substantial,” the fourth step of a ve-level scale.
It wasn’t clear what the nature of the threat to the concert was.
In an interview with The Guardian last year, band members said they chose the word Allah — Arabic for God — because they were seeking a “holy-sounding” name and didn’t realize it might cause offense. Police in Warsaw, Poland, beefed up security for the band’s performance there Thursday night, checking
a few hundred fans as they arrived at the NIEBO (Heaven) club.
Joanna Konieczna, 32, was excited that she would be hearing her favorite band live.
“The events in Rotterdam did not scare me, I feel very safe in Poland,” she told The Associated Press. Spain, already on high alert following last week’s deadly attacks in and near Barcelona that killed 15
people and injured more than 120 others, played a key role in the events of Wednesday and Thursday. A Spanish counterterrorism of cial said Spain’s Civil Guard received “an alert indicating the possibility of an attack in a concert that was going to take place in Rotterdam.” The Civil Guard shared the information
with Dutch authorities, said the of cial, who spoke anonymously. ___
Mike Corder reported from The Hague. AP writers Aritz Parra in Madrid and Monika Scislowska in War- saw, Poland, contributed to this report.
Bay area leaders strive to protect speech, prevent violence By PAUL ELIAS and JANIE HAR, Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Police and civic leaders in the cradle of America’s free speech movement will struggle to balance liberty of expression with safeguards against violence as demonstrators with varying political viewpoints travel to the San Francisco Bay Area for dueling rallies throughout the weekend.
On Saturday, a politically conservative group called Patriot Prayer will host a “freedom rally” near the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, over the vociferous objections of San Francisco’s Mayor Ed Lee and other Democratic leaders who say the group invites hate. On Sunday, a transsexual supporter of President Donald Trump plans a “No to Marxism in America” event in a downtown city park in nearby Berkeley.
Opponents will mobilize too, including clowns and drag queens as well as an anti-Trump organization that has sometimes supported violent tactics.
The challenge for law enforcement comes after an Aug. 12 rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia that turned deadly, killing one counter-protester and two state troopers. Police in both California cities traditionally have given demonstrators a wide berth, even when rallies in recent years turned violent as protesters from both the left and the right have punched people, destroyed property and engaged in violence.
But the deaths and injuries in Charlottesville have police, civic leaders and civil rights groups in the San Francisco area and across the United States rethinking how to respond to hate speech and how to man- age competing protests.
The American Civil Liberties Union said it will no longer represent hate groups that demonstrate with weapons after it was criticized for persuading a judge to let the Charlottesville protest go forward. In Boston last weekend, police successfully separated tens of thousands of people shouting anti-Nazi and anti-KKK slogans who showed up to protest a much smaller conservative “free speech” rally — but drawing some complaints that the speakers didn’t get to be heard.
“We’re in an interesting situation no question about it, where the Bay Area, known for its protection of speech is also known for how much it deplores discrimination and hate speech,” said Julie Nice, a consti- tutional law professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law.
She said police are in a tough spot because they are constitutionally obligated to protect even hateful