At the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, in 2012, demonstrators and others were kept inside of a wire pen, which was classified as the approved "free speech zone." And police officers herded protestors and press into the huge cage.
RNC was so militarized, even attendees were complaining about the level of security- there were unscalable fences, bomb-sniffing dogs, even long-range acoustic devices, which could shatter eardrums. The criminalization of dissent was obvious.
At the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2012, many protestors were kept away from the convention center. They were asked to express their views in a designated plot of land down the street from the Charlotte Convention Center, just off the highway.
TSA agents were sent to the Convention Center area to join the inept Secret Service in security efforts. Police were both on foot and mounted on bicycles, and bomb-sniffing dogs and "behavioral detection" experts were assigned to duty as well to keep an eye out for anything suspicious.
Now convention planners for the RNC and DNC, Anthony Comstock and Joseph R. McCarthy, have issued a joint statement advising Hong Kong police on how to control pro-democracy students.
"Put the students and their supporters in free speech zones and cages. Perhaps it is "Orwellian" and heavy-handed, but it works. You've got to get the protestors literally out of sight of the mass media, hence there will be no coverage anywhere in the world," says the joint statement.
Other suggestions were to "shatter a few eardrums with acoustics and that will assist you in herding students into cages," ask for the advise of the U.S. Secret Service, and import German Shepherds and Rotweillers into Hong Kong,
