home > resources > archive ACLU Reporter: Fall 1999 Table of Contents: Why Civil Libertarians Should be Concerned about the 2002 Olympic Games The Olympics, Homelessness, and Civil Rights Private Security Forces and the Olympic Games ACLU of Utah Preparing for 2002 World Stage in Salt Lake City _________________________ Why Civil Libertarians Should be Concerned about the 2002 Olympic Games By Cori Sutherland, ACLU of Utah Deputy Director Several months before Salt Lake City was awarded the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah joined low income, disability, and minority advocates to form Salt Lake Impact 2002 & Beyond. Since 1995, this coalition has expressed concern about the impact the games will have on residents and taxpayers in Utah, and has advocated for a responsible, community-wide Olympic event that will benefit all Utahns, rather than a select few. On the surface, it seems strange for an organization that deals with constitutional issues to become a part of such a coalition. After all, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, a nonprofit organization, is responsible for running the Olympics, and the ACLU of Utah is hardly in the business of monitoring the actions of other nonprofits. On closer examination, however, it’s clear that because of its close ties to city and state governments, SLOC - whose board of directors includes both Salt Lake City Mayor Deedee Corradini and Governor Michael Leavitt - is not quite a private organization and it therefore merits greater public scrutiny. Salt Lake City’s proposed master plan for the 2002 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games outlines numerous ways in which both the city and state are an integral part of the Olympic effort. This is especially evident in the use of public money to finance the event. In 1989, for example, a successful citizen referendum made it possible to divert 1/32nd of 1% of sales tax from state and local governments from January 1990 to December 1999 to develop winter sports facilities. While SLOC must eventually repay this money, the loan represents an awesome financial commitment on the part of our government. The city has committed other resources as well. The master plan acknowledges that the winter Olympics will "place extraordinary demands on the City’s service delivery resources," and city officials are struggling to figure out how to deal with an international event without compromising regular services to residents. To cover the extra costs associated with the increased services, the city is actively fundraising, and is looking for money from "a variety of sources, including SLOC, the federal government, State and multi-agency entities, and others (grants, etc.)." Federal projects associated with the Olympics include a grant for development in the gateway area, light rail subsidies, and law enforcement support during the games. Because of the government resources involved and the enormous public impact of the 2002 winter Olympics, the ACLU of Utah and Salt Lake Impact have always argued that SLOC, which is subject to city and state oversight, should abide by the same sorts of laws that apply to government agencies. Indeed, if SLOC had acted in accordance with Utah’s sunshine laws and opened both its records and meetings to the public, it is arguable that it could have avoided the bribery scandal that wracked the organization in December 1998. As early as 1992, Atlanta citizens made similar demands of their 1996 summer Olympic organizing committee, ACOG. Concerned that ACOG was not hiring a diverse staff that accurately reflected Atlanta’s population, community organizations asked ACOG to make its hiring and salary records public. In support of this request, Georgia’s Attorney General argued that since ACOG was acting on behalf of the state and local governments, it should abide by that state’s Open Records Act. However, it was only this summer, almost seven years later and long after the summer Olympics, that ACOG unsealed its records. The Salt Lake Olympic bribery scandal has finally made SLOC and Utah officials listen to our requests for openness and accountability. During the 1999 legislative session, Representative David Jones proposed the successful HB 285, which requires SLOC committees to adhere to Utah’s sunshine laws and establish records-access policies that are consistent with state laws regarding government documents. HB 285 is only a first step to an open and accountable Olympic effort, and we will see if SLOC can live up to the promises it has recently made to an understandably skeptical public. Even if SLOC ushers in a new era of openness, an Olympic event will necessarily impact civil liberties. The rest of this newsletter examines some of the potential problems: Karen Denton looks at how the massive security effort may affect our more vulnerable populations such as the homeless; Joanna Kobak-Hudson examines the necessary reliance on private security and the difficulties in coordinating law enforcement from many different agencies; and Stephen Clark asks how Utah can adequately accommodate free expression activities during an international event. From these articles, it is evident that it is not at all too early for the ACLU of Utah to look for solutions to these difficult and - for Utah, at least - unprecedented problems. Our hope is that by working with those involved in the Olympic effort now, we will be better able to effectively address civil liberties violations during the 17-day extravaganza. _________________________ The Olympics, Homelessness, and Civil Rights By Karen Denton, Executive Director of the Homeless Children’s Foundation Tim Funk of Impact 2002 & Beyond sounded the warning bell for members of the Salt Lake County Homeless Coordinating Council in March. Not only will Salt Lake City welcome all those paying visitors from around the world for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, but we will also host people "who will come without enough means to support themselves." That’s a sobering thought for service providers for homeless and low-income people. These agencies already face high caseloads and service restrictions due to tighter donor dollars, housing shortages, and increasing pressure to disperse most homeless families away from the Salt Lake Community Shelter and Self-Sufficiency Center located in the Gateway area, near one of the proposed Olympic medal venues. Civil libertarians also have cause for concern about the impending Olympics and the impact on low-income people. Many of these issues were outlined during a forum co-sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah, the Utah Housing Coalition, and Impact 2002. Gerald Weber, the Legal Director of the ACLU of Georgia, and Anita Beatty, Co-President of the Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, presented their experiences from the 1996 Summer Olympic Games and their recommendations for the 2002 event. Weber and Beatty faced a variety of policies that were hostile to low-income and homeless communities, including: 1.Sweeps of homeless camps and gathering areas, particularly before conventions arrived in Atlanta; 2.The demolition of old buildings that might have been used as affordable housing; 3.The creation of homelessness by increased rents or rehabilitated motels and apartments, which forced out long-time residents and left them with no place to go; 4.The attempt to convert at least one single room occupancy (SRO) hotel into temporary housing for a sponsor’s employees. Fortunately, this action was stopped when the state Housing Finance Authority said this was an illegal act because it partially subsidized the SRO with government money. In addition, the Atlanta city government passed a series of ordinances that, for all intents and purposes, made homelessness illegal. These new laws prohibited aggressive panhandling, lying down on a public park bench, either remaining in or walking across a public parking lot unless one had a car parked in that lot, and occupying vacant buildings. The Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless discovered during a four month study that homeless individuals accounted for 11% of all arrests for the first three of the ordinances while housed people constituted only 1%. In the meantime, Atlanta built a new city jail, described in one article as "the first Olympic project completed on time." Additionally, the Task Force found that African Americans made up the largest numbers of homeless people arrested under the new ordinances. They estimated that Atlanta spent between $300,000 and $500,000 annually to incarcerate homeless detainees, which obviously took funding away from other programs such as housing. Beatty and Weber recommended the repeal of the ordinances. Panhandling is already a violation here in Salt Lake City and we are starting to see increased harassment of people in the downtown area who are deemed undesirable by the police - street musicians, for example. However, we are making some preparations to avoid the problems that Atlanta faced. Impact 2002 is seeking solutions to the housing problem, including possible state legislation allowing rent control (currently against state law) for the three months surrounding both the Olympics and Paralympics. Service providers have formed the Humanitarian Services Committee as a subcommittee to the Salt Lake Olympic Committee. This committee, headed by Linda Hilton, director of the Coalition of Religious Communities, has a litany of issues to discuss: transportation, security, civil rights, and housing among others. Since the formation of the Humanitarian Services Committee, Hilton has already scored one victory. Pioneer Park was scheduled to be one of the medal ceremony venues, but unlike other proposed venues such as the City-County building, SLOC officials wanted to create a one-block security zone around the space. This would have deleteriously affected homeless services around the park. She protested the obvious bias and, as of this writing, Pioneer Park has been dropped from the list of ceremony sites. In an April meeting with homeless advocates, Salt Lake Organizing Committee chief Mitt Romney stated publicly that SLOC will not advocate for sweeps of the homeless. It is now up to the community to keep SLOC to its word. For more information on either Impact 2002 & Beyond or the Humanitarian Services Committee, contact Tim Funk or Linda Hilton at (801) 364-7765. _________________________ Private Security Forces and the Olympic Games By Joanna Kobak-Hudson, Research and Public Relations Coordinator, ACLU of Utah Last March, activists from Atlanta, Georgia described the various civil rights problems they encountered during the 1996 Olympics. Among other things, they emphasized that the increased use of private security in association with local, state, and federal law enforcement during the games resulted in increased violations of civil rights, including infringements on First Amendment rights, homeless sweeps, and racial profiling. They also noted issues of inadequate training and unclear jurisdiction due to the combination of private, federal, state, and local law enforcement. As was the case in Atlanta in 1996, private security undoubtedly will be used in Salt Lake City to ensure adequate security during the 2002 games. While heightened security is clearly necessary at such an event, the presence of private security forces during the Olympics raises numerous issues of great concern to the ACLU. The use of private security in the United States has increased tremendously in recent years. Corporations, cities, and so-called "gated communities" have resorted to private law enforcement in an effort to reduce crime and enhance the quality of life for employees or residents. Salt Lake City is certainly no exception, with a substantial presence of such forces at ZCMI and Crossroads Malls downtown. If the experiences described by those in Atlanta are any indication, Salt Lake City officials and business interests will surely heighten efforts to purge the downtown area of perceived "undesirables" in anticipation of the 2002 Olympics. As Karen Denton outlines in her article, the adoption of various anti-homeless ordinances and the increased privatization of downtown Atlanta caused an almost complete displacement of the city’s homeless population. Recent events in Salt Lake City, such as the sale of Main Street to the LDS Church, indicate that this process may already be well under way in our community. As the 2002 Olympics approach, private businesses may intensify the presence of private security forces in an attempt to rid the downtown area of the homeless, mentally ill, or other groups believed to be disruptive or unpleasant to Olympic visitors. One of the most troubling aspects of this trend toward the use of private security forces is that such officers may not be subject to the legal constraints that govern the conduct of official police under local, state, or federal authority. For instance, while it is well settled that the Fourth Amendment shields citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures, this protection normally applies only to state action as carried out by official law enforcement officers. Whether private security forces engaged in stopping, detaining, and even searching individuals suspected of criminal conduct are engaged in state action is one of the more slippery and troublesome areas of civil rights litigation. The Supreme Court has stated that it is an "impossible task" to "fashion and apply a precise formula" for when state action is present. The Supreme Court and lower courts have held, however, that to the extent a private actor is performing a "traditional public function," or is acting jointly or in concert with public officials, state action can be found. These legal principles may become especially significant in light of the increasing privatization of downtown areas and the corresponding presence of private security forces, particularly during special events such as the Olympics. Furthermore, the fusion of local, state, federal, and private law enforcement during the Olympics raises concerns as to the accountability for alleged abuses by specific officers. If an individual wants to file a grievance against a particular police officer, normally he or she can do so with the Bureau of Internal Affairs within the appropriate agency. However, as the Legal Director of the ACLU of Georgia emphasized, once the various law enforcement entities are essentially merged it becomes increasingly difficult to ascertain which agency or security company should be held accountable for a particular officer’s conduct. Finally, private and federal law enforcement officers recruited for the Olympics often fail to receive adequate training in the state and local law of the Olympic host city. The March conference on the impact of the Olympics on individual civil liberties represents the commitment of the ACLU of Utah to confront these important civil rights issues well in advance of the 2002 Winter Games. In the coming months, it will be crucial for our organization to play a central role in the development of law enforcement policies and procedures that respect the basic civil rights of all individuals in Salt Lake City before and during the 2002 Olympic Games. _________________________ ACLU of Utah Preparing for 2002 World Stage in Salt Lake City By Stephen Clark, ACLU of Utah Legal Director The 2002 Winter Olympic Games will shine the spotlight on athletes from around the world as they represent their countries in competition. It will also provide an opportunity for advocates of all stripes to bring their messages to a worldwide audience. That opportunity creates a challenge for Olympic organizers and law enforcement officials: to ensure protection of First Amendment rights without undermining legitimate security and crowd-control measures. The First Amendment generally protects the right of all people in our country - citizens and non-citizens alike - to assemble, demonstrate, and speak out on issues of public concern. That right, however, is subject to reasonable regulations as to "time, place and manner." For example, it is constitutional for a city to require that individuals apply for a permit that states the time and place of their demonstration, that demonstrators not obstruct foot traffic, that demonstrations take place only during daylight hours, or - as is required in Salt Lake City - that demonstrators do not use placards with wooden sticks. The rules generally must be neutral as to the content of the message, applied consistently, and narrowly tailored to achieve compelling governmental interests. Given the need to maintain security and order during the Olympic fortnight, it is to be expected that officials will not grant demonstrators unlimited access to Olympic venues, but will seek instead to confine organized demonstrations to specified "free speech zones." In general, the ACLU does not oppose this approach. But we will work to ensure that any regulations are consistent with the Constitution and provide a meaningful opportunity for demonstrators to broadcast their messages. In a recent meeting with the head of the Utah Olympic Public Safety Command - the body responsible for creating free speech zones and carrying out the massive Olympic security effort - we stated that we would like to work with them to make sure that there will be adequate demonstration sites. Specifically, we are committed to doing the following: 1.Identifying free speech zones that will be part of, rather than far removed from, public events and activities conducted during the Olympics. 2.Ensuring a neutral, fair, equitable, and expeditious system for granting permits for access to the free speech zones. 3.Providing guidelines for both security personnel and demonstrators so that all will be aware of their rights and responsibilities. 4.Establishing teams to monitor the designated free speech zones so that the system operates fairly and smoothly. 5.Developing a procedure for rapid response to claimed violations of First Amendment rights, with respect to both organized demonstrations in designated free speech zones and informal, spontaneous protests on public streets and sidewalks. In addition to designated areas, it is very important that public streets, parks, and sidewalks - the "traditional public forums" of our vigorous American "marketplace of ideas" - remain open to the maximum extent consistent with legitimate security and logistical needs for informal, unorganized speech and protest. At times, the unusual circumstances of an Olympic event can make it difficult to distinguish between the public and the private, as was evidenced by the Centennial Olympic Park of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta. Although it was called a "park," used as the central plaza for the summer games, and built to become a city landmark after the games, the Atlanta Olympic organizing committee (ACOG) and the Georgia State Legislature designated it as a private facility, thus allowing Olympic officials to arrest demonstrators for trespassing. While ACOG welcomed the world to Atlanta, demonstrators were clearly excluded from their invitation list. Salt Lake City may face a similar issue with SLOC’s recent discussions about locating the public medals plaza on Block 85, a parking lot owned by the Mormon Church which has generously offered to donate the use of it during the 2002 games. It is unclear what free speech rules will apply to such a space. A very different situation would arise if the medals ceremony were to take place at an unequivocally public place, such as the Salt Lake City-County Building. The ACLU is determined to contribute to a 2002 Winter Olympics that is not only a model of sportsmanship but also a beacon of America’s tradition of free speech. We encourage ACLU members and interested others to contact us if they are willing to work on a committee to pursue the above objectives. Return to top of page

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