Title: Deputies prepare for protesters
by Christopher Quinn of the Sentinel Staff

[This articles continues on 687 but the entire text of the article is included here for easier reading.]

PHOTO [AP file photo]: A guy in an ADAPT T-shirt sits on the sidewalk in front of a set of glass doors. His knees are bent but together and his feet are out to each side. His mouth is slightly open and he is wearing a hat. Behind him, through the glass a group of security men are standing holding the door handles and conferring.
Caption: A disabled activist sits outside a casino in Sparks, Nev., in an '89 protest. Orange deputies are studying videos of the event.

Title: Disabled activists plan to disrupt a convention of nursing home operators.

In city after city since 1983, wheelchair-riding activists have climbed from their chairs, dragged themselves along the ground, halted traffic and chained themselves to buildings.

On Sunday they’re coming to Orlando.

They intend to be arrested, and the Orange County Sheriffs Office plans to accommodate them. Deputies have spent the past month gathering information on how to handle the protesters.

"This isn't a win situation. No one wants to arrest paraplegics,” Sheriff Walt Gallagher said Thursday. “But I have to enforce the law.”

The activists are members of ADAPT (Americans Disabled for Attendant Programs Today) and they plan to disrupt a convention of nursing home operators. The members believe the federal government spends too much money on nursing homes and too little helping the disabled live at home.

The protest is aimed at the American Health Care Association, which is holding its annual meeting Sunday through Thursday at the Orange County Convention and Civic Center.

“We want to make life miserable for them," said Mike Auberger, a quadriplegic who cofounded the group and now fights nursing homes.

Auberger said the group will try not to inconvenience anyone but convention delegates. He said the convention is a prime target for his group because it is the only place so many nursing home operators gather. The protesters want 25 percent of the federal money spent on nursing homes shifted to home care for the disabled.

Law enforcement officials who have dealt with the protesters in other cities say the group's main goal is favorable television coverage.

“They'd like nothing better than to have the local media take a picture of three or four big cops taking a guy to the ground.” said Bob Cowman, a lieutenant for the Sparks, Nev., police.

Members of the group descended on Sparks, a city near Reno, in 1989. They were stymied, however, when police methodically stopped the activists from disrupting a convention. Sparks officers gently arrested anyone who broke the law. When members threw themselves to the ground and crawled across streets, hoping to be picked up and hauled off to jail, police just watched, frustrating the protesters.

The Sparks methods for dealing with the group’s tactics have become the standard other agencies emulate. Orange deputies have spent hours watching videotapes of the Sparks protest. The tapes show legless protesters throwing themselves out of their wheelchairs and walking on their hands across streets.

“Members have been known to throw their colostomy bags at the Police,” says a Sparks report on the protest. Auberger said that’s just not true.

The Sparks convention and protest were smaller than what is expected in Orange County. The Sparks convention involved 500 delegates and around 100 protesters. The convention here will involve more than 3,000 delegates and more than 300 protesters.

“We’re as prepared as we’re going to be,” said Sgt. Jon Swanson, head of sheriffs intelligence.

Today a wheelchair-bound consultant will teach deputies how to arrest the disabled without hurting them or damaging the wheelchairs.

Starting Sunday a riot squad will be at the convention center 24 hours a day. If the disabled protesters attempt to block traffic or center entrances, 120 deputies will be on hand to make arrests. The county will have to pay as much as $200,000 in overtime.

“One hundred and twenty cops isn't going to do it," Auberger said. “That's not enough per person."

The cost is in addition to whatever Orange jail chief Tom Allison spends housing arrested activists and tending to their medical needs. Allison said he’s ready to handle hundreds of prisoners in wheelchairs.

Swanson and Allison said they hope any activists who get arrested stay in jail a few days. Bonds will be set at $500 for the misdemeanor charges the protesters usually face. Because the activists are from out of state, bail bond agents will be unlikely to help, said John Von Achen, president of the Tri-County Bonding Association.

When members have been arrested and freed without bond in other cities, they have immediately returned to the protests to be arrested again.

“We don't want to get into a scenario where we arrest them, release them, arrest them, release them, arrest them, release them,” Allison said.

Auberger said there is another way: “Not to arrest any of us.” The headquarters hotel for the convention is the Peabody Orlando, across from the convention center, but some delegates are staying up the street at the Clarion Plaza Hotel. The protesters have reserved 90 rooms at the Clarion.

The convention schedule calls for delegates to be in seminars at the convention center or in training at Walt Disney World on Sunday and Monday. Auberger said his group might stage a protest at Disney.

On Tuesday morning, however, Red Cross president Elizabeth Dole will address the convention. Television weatherman Willard Scott will speak Wednesday. Swanson said the protesters might save their big protest for the speeches.

Cowman, the Sparks lieutenant, said Orange deputies just need to expect the worst.

“Some of them are basically professional protesters,” he said of the group’s members. But they are severely disabled, and Sparks officers repeatedly offered to help the activists.

“You can’t help but feel sorry for these people," Cowman said.