A 30-year veteran of the Bellevue Police Dept., Capt. Evers worried aloud about the future of his hometown should radicalized groups, like Kansas-based Operation Rescue West, pull up stakes following the assassination of George Tiller by one of its own adherents and head north from Wichita. In promotional pitches, the group that boasts of stopping "abortion in obedience to biblical mandates" now promises to descend on this southern Omaha suburb where Tiller's friend and colleague Dr. Leroy Carhart runs the Abortion and Contraception Clinic of Nebraska.
"It will affect the quality of life of the city of Bellevue," said Evers. "It just will. We know that. And we're trying to prevent that by every means possible."
Those means came from two weeks of hurried planning and a crash course in federal law for Evers who coordinated with 10 local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, including the South Metro SWAT Team, U.S. Attorneys office, U.S. Marshals and the Joint Terrorism Task Force, in response to Operation Rescue's sudden plans for a street protest at Carhart's clinic on August 28-29.
After hearing about the heavy media push by a tightly wound network of national anti-choice activist groups and two local groups, Rescue the Heartland and Nebraskans United for Life, to turn out supporters, Evers said he quickly contacted Kansas authorities for help.
Bellevue prepares for the worst
"So when Operation Rescue announces that they're coming to Bellevue we're going, ugh, the history is that it's 500 to 1,000 people. That's what we were told by Wichita," Evers tells me in the incident command center, an old Winnebago-style recreational vehicle parked behind a city service garage a few blocks from the clinic.
A concern that throngs of protesters and clinic defenders would scuffle, or that anti-choice activists would mimic armed town hall agitators was at the forefront of Evers' mind. After a whirlwind trip to Wichita to share intelligence and convene a law enforcement brain trust on counter-protest strategies, he and his commanders spent 14 hour days over the next two weeks creating a detailed tactical plan for various law enforcement units should there be trouble.
High on the list of priorities? Prepping officers with a primer on First Amendment rights, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act and a cheat sheet of crimes local prosecutors could charge protesters with.
Hearing the lessons learned by Wichita police after years of relentless and sometimes violent protests at Tiller's clinic, Evers set out to contact organizations on both sides of the debate to appeal for a peaceful protest. Nebraska NOW president Erin Sullivan said she was extremely pleased by the police department's responsiveness and willingness to negotiate a good outcome.
"If I had to rate it on a 1-10 scale, I'd really have to say it was like a nine," said Sullivan who led the clinic defense efforts and also got advice from experienced Kansas activists. "We were going to be protected which was really important."
To the city's relief, the protesters' efforts to amass the expected 500 activists fizzled when just 65 people showed up over two days at the Mission Avenue clinic to "minister" to patients by yelling slogans, waving ultrasound images and hoisting gruesome pickets. Meanwhile, 200 clinic defenders from 16 states chanted, "Welcome. Welcome. This clinic stays open!" while shielding patients' faces with pro-choice placards to prevent them from being taped by the protesters' video cameras.
With little fanfare, the Saturday protest suddenly disbursed just after Noon. The dueling "Truth Trucks" parked on the barricaded street outside the clinic packed up and moved on. Anti-choice activists quickly cleared out save for a fervent bunch of ten locals who displayed signs and cajoled drivers to honk their horns in support until mid-afternoon. On the adjoining street corner more than two-dozen pro-choice activists held their ground.
All the while, the city's ten patrol officers on the scene remained vigilant.
Nebraska residents pay the price for carpet bagging activists
Even despite the paltry turn out, Operation Rescue's call to arms will set the Bellevue Police Dept. back at least $10,000 for regular wages for two officers plus overtime pay for the eight more assigned to clinic duty, according to Evers' back of napkin estimate.
For Bellevue residents the timing couldn't be worse.
The unanticipated police costs come two days after Mayor Gary Mixan announced he would need to trim $5 million, or roughly 10 percent, from the city's annual budget. Expenses for the cooperating local law enforcement agencies from Omaha, Papillion, La Vista, Douglas and Sarpy Counties, the Nebraska state patrol and Council Bluffs, Iowa were not immediately available.
Down at the impromptu command center on the heavily guarded border of Offutt Air Force Base, SWAT team members and uniformed officers lounged and watched screaming jets perform aerobatics at the weekend air show from the back of pickup trucks and makeshift encampments under a stand of trees.
As he knocks on the RV's Formica kitchen table for good luck, Evers tells me there were no arrests on either side. Yet, his worries are from over. Should Operation Rescue target Bellevue by launching regular protests on the scale of those in Wichita he estimates the city would easily need an additional 100 cops to maintain law and order at the clinic.
Carhart, the man at the center of the protesters' obsessive zealotry, is quite glum about the financial effects on a community where he has practiced medicine for the last 21 years and whose economy has been rocked by the nationwide recession.
A veteran of the belligerent Tiller clinic protests, Carhart estimates that the combined efforts of state, local and federal authorities could easily approach $1 million or more in taxpayer dollars.
