Each August, Kitty Koch takes a “learning trip” with her grandson.
They rode Amtrak cross-country during his train phase at age 6 and searched for bugs in the Olympic Peninsula the next summer.
Last week in Denver, 11-year-old Finn learned about far weightier matters.
Grandma and grandson watched demonstrators holler about American imperialism. Koch traded kettle corn for Finn’s patience each evening inside the Democratic National Convention, to which a friend gave her two passes.
Finn asked about the differences between Democrats and Republicans. He wanted to know more about the war he saw teenagers protesting so passionately. And he was curious about the old men waving picture of fetuses.
For four nights, Koch and Finn ate ice cream on 16th Street, watching people rant for Ron Paul and hula-hoop for world harmony.
For some things, she figured, it’s worth staying up late.
“Finn’s had his jaw dropped the entire time,” she said of the kid from a New Jersey suburb.
She was delighted to answer his questions. Except the one that came up most: “Why are there so many police?”
It was a reasonable query, given the gaggles of cops posted day and night in their hotel coffee shop and men’s room. What kid wouldn’t be struck by the Darth Vader riot masks and trusses of plastic handcuffs that police carried the way kids his age sport friendship bracelets in clusters.
Mayor John Hickenlooper defends the overwhelming police presence even after 21,000 fewer protesters took to the streets than anticipated.
“You all have no idea how much bad stuff” police prevented from happening, mayoral spokeswoman Lindy Eichenbaum Lent told me late Thursday. She wouldn’t say what kind of “bad stuff” she meant.
It’s noteworthy that the bottle of feces police mind-readers claim a college student was “getting ready to throw” may actually have been a bottle of iced coffee with soy milk. You have to wonder whether the caches of human waste police say they found downtown really were intended as ammunition or were merely left by protesters opting not to use indoor plumbing.
With its $50 million in federal security money, it is no doubt that Denver gained the tactical advantage over protesters Hickenlooper feared would break windows and throw excrement. It could be argued that the 3,300-officer presence helped protect visitors like Koch and her grandson from unspecified disaster.
“You can’t measure prevention,” said police spokesman Sonny Jackson.
Still, the city overblew the threat of disruption, even to the point of dishonesty.
Jackson told me Tuesday that officers were getting “spit on” by protestors. Three days later he acknowledged he “couldn’t verify” any spit “for certain” among the 154 DNC-related arrests.
In the end, last week’s police state only perpetuated the culture of fear that Barack Obama talked so eloquently about ending. In a week when Denver finally managed to galvanize Americans about something more important than football or baseball, it’s too bad the city let a kid equate the sight of a billy stick with political expression.
Before leaving town, Koch lamented that visions of riot police on horses and SWAT trucks struck her grandson more than Obama’s acceptance speech.
“It’s not the memory I was hoping he’d have,” she said.
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
