Friday August 11 8:27 PM ET

Judge Bars LAPD From Raiding Activist HQ

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A Los Angeles judge on Friday issued a restraining

order preventing police from raiding the headquarters of activists

planning mass street protests during next week's Democratic National

Convention.

The temporary restraining order forbids police from entering the

ramshackle four-story ``Convergence Center'' in the downtown area without

a warrant and from seizing giant puppets, posters and placards that dozens

of activists are making inside.

The court order was sought by the American Civil Liberties Union of

Southern California after the main umbrella groups D2KLA and Direct Action

Network complained that their rights to free speech were being violated by

police harassment.

The activists, who plan some 20 major nonviolent marches or rallies on

issues ranging from the death penalty and sweatshop labor to corporate

globalization, had feared a mass police raid on Saturday, two days before

the Democrats come to town for the Aug 14-17 convention.

ACLU lawyers said they had logged 22 separate incidents of surveillance

and harassment, including random police visits without warrants, low

helicopter overflights and people being followed and searched after

leaving the building.

The demonstrations, which start at the weekend, may rival those in

Seattle, Washington D.C., and at the Republican Convention in Philadelphia

last week, although neither the organizers nor the police have put a

figure on how many people might take part.

The Los Angeles police department, facing its toughest public test since

the savage 1992 riots surrounding the police beating of black motorist

Rodney King, says it believes the majority of protesters will be peaceful.

But they have also pledged that unlawful behavior will not be tolerated

and that their main task is to ensure that the convention goes ahead

without interruption.

U.S. District Court Judge Dean Pregerson however declined to bar police

from keeping the protest headquarters under surveillance if they had

``probable cause.''

``The city has a history of unfortunate riots...on hot summer days,''

Pregerson said, adding that police officers had a right to ``protect the

city, the people who are coming here for the Democratic National

Convention and the people who are lawfully protesting.''