Gun maker Glock frequently sued over safety

Central Fla. officials move to rein in terrorism-awareness program

Associated Press
Posted July 16 2004, 12:07 PM EDT

ORLANDO -- One week after civil rights advocates criticized a plan to teach firefighters, cable installers and other workers who regularly go into homes to report signs of terrorist activity, authorities have agreed to scrap thousands of printed brochures for the program and rewrite training guidelines.

The Orange County Sheriff's Office had already printed 5,000 brochures outlining the Citizen Awareness Program. But law enforcement officers will now rewrite the policies to remove references to particular ethnic groups.

``You don't want to focus, for a number of reasons, on any one group,'' said Joyce Dawley, regional director for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and co-chairman of the task force overseeing the program. ``A number of different groups out there are willing to hurt people.''

The brochure cautioned that ``multiple adult males living together, usually of Middle Eastern appearance and between the ages of 18 and 45, with little or no furnishings'' could signal international terrorism.

It also called for workers to report signs of drug trafficking and child sex abuse, and included the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Sheriff's Lt. Lee Massie, who helped design the program, said the brochure was a draft that was printed before it was ready.

Authorities planned to present a list of revisions to Arab-American leaders on Friday, said Taleb Salhab, president of the Arab-American Community Center of Central Florida.

But Scott Rost, of the ACLU's Orlando office, said the program probably cannot be fixed.

``We think it should die a merciful death in the near future because of public outcry,'' Rost said.