Opinion: Police wronged the protesters

Hillsborough State Attorney Mark Ober did the right thing by dropping charges against three protesters arrested at President Bush's recent Tampa visit. If anything, the people who should have been hauled away as public nuisances were the Bush supporters who surrounded and taunted the protesters to deny them their right of peaceful assembly and freedom of speech.

Ober's decision -- he is a Republican -- shows the sound judgment he brings to the job as Hillsborough's top prosecutor. But Tampa police were derelict in their duty, to say the least. Officers working the June event allowed themselves to be used as pawns. Republican organizers had no authority to ask police to make the arrests. Not only is a presidential visit a public event, but the rally was held on publicly owned Legends Field.

Whatever the political fallout, this abuse of police power at the behest of political operatives raises an important question: What kind of department does Chief Bennie Holder run, when officers assigned to a presidential visit aren't capable of protecting a citizen's right to free expression? The freedoms involved could not be more fundamental.

Those Republican toughs involved in trampling the First Amendment embarrassed their party and diminished the president's message at Legends Field. But society has laws and institutions to check the abuses of self-important political hacks. In this case, that backstop -- the police -- failed miserably. They had a duty to protect the rights of the protesters, but it was easier for them to go along with the ugly majority. Not their finest hour.

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