"New York City Cops Training for GOP Convention"

Glenn Thrush, Newsday

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the NYPD is creating a specialized
training program for rookie cops to prepare them for possible disturbances
at this summer's Republican National Convention.

The commissioner plans to deploy many of the 730 recruits who were sworn
in Wednesday to the area surrounding the convention at Madison Square
Garden after they graduate in July.The convention runs from Aug. 30 to Sept 2.

The cadets, along with some veterans, will get special training in crowd
control, civil rights law, the use of scooters to respond to disturbances,
and anti-terrorism techniques. About 30,000 of the department's 36,000
uniformed officers already have received some kind of counterterrorism
training, he said.

"We're constructing comprehensive training programs," the commissioner
told reporters after the swearing-in ceremony at Brooklyn College. "There
will be disorder training, as you call it, where you act as a team in
formation. Obviously, we'll also instruct them on the rights of
demonstrators."

Kelly said the preparations will help the department avoid violent
encounters of the kind that marred the Chicago Democratic National
Convention in 1968.

"Law enforcement has come a long way since Chicago '68," he said.

Mass training exercises not unlike disaster drills will likely take place
at Shea Stadium or Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field between now and the
convention. Kelly said his legal staff has begun to talk with protest
groups about permits and has assured them that anti-GOP demonstrators
would be allowed "within sight and sound" of Madison Square Garden.

The size and cost of the city's deployment will depend on how many
demonstrators show up and how much support the NYPD gets from federal law
enforcement agencies, Kelly said.

In addition to convention deployments, many of the rookies will be
assigned to high-crime areas as part of the department's Operation Impact
program.