LOS ANGELES KEEPS ITS EYES ON PROTESTERS AND THE POLICE

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 15 -- Long before the Democratic National Convention opened, the Los Angeles Police Department was haunted by unhappy images from the past, from the 1992 riots here to the violent protests at last year's World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. This week, it has greeted the world with a massive, intimidating picture: dark blue uniforms, on city streets, under freeway overpasses, in convention hotels, on scooters and bicycles, in helicopters and patrol cars.

The collective presence of law enforcement officers on display seems to clearly outnumber a disparate group of several thousand demonstrators supporting a dizzying array of causes. And the stakes are high: Both Democrats and city officials know that the world is watching the long-troubled L.A.P.D. this week, and the early reviews are mixed.

On Monday night, as a hot day of peaceful protests turned suddenly violent when a few dozen demonstrators flung chunks of concrete, bottles and ball-bearings across a high security fence ringing the Staples Center arena, the police wasted no time firing back with rubber bullets and beanbags to disperse the unruly remnants of a crowd of several thousand.

The resulting television images did not quite dispel the lingering image of Los Angeles as the city where a videotaped police beating nearly a decade ago ignited tensions and ultimately led to the 1992 riots, and where the Lakers' basketball championship victory just six weeks ago set off bonfires and vandalism that the police did relatively little to stop.

But today, as demonstrations supporting bus riders, and celebrating themes like "Value Women's Work" and "Justice for Youth" proceeded calmly, police officials strongly defended their tactics -- and Democratic officials who were on the roof watching and approving their tactical decisions backed them up.

In midafternoon, about 45 animal rights activists opposed to the fur trade were arrested near Pershing Square after banging on a fur shop window, and the police shut down a two-block area while they made the arrests.

"Everybody's an armchair critic," said Commander David Kalish, the senior police spokesman. "I think people feel safer when they see a lot of police on the street."

Commander Kalish said officers had endured tossed rocks and bottles during a rock concert by the protest band, Rage Against the Machine, but that afterward, when some demonstrators began tossing metal bars, setting posters afire and scaling a 14-foot chain link fence that officials feared might give way, officers on horseback, swinging batons, moved to disperse the crowd.

About a half dozen people were arrested.

In Philadelphia two weeks ago, with the city intent on maintaining an upbeat appearance for the Republican National Convention, large contingents of police clearly worked to avoid full-scale clashes with street demonstrators.

Protesters clogged intersections in the downtown area with only selective interference from the police.

The convention, about three miles away in South Philadelphia, was largely unfazed.

In all, about 300 people were arrested.

Marcia Hale, a top aide to the Gore campaign overseeing convention planning who watched the clash here from the roof of the convention complex, said party officials supported the police response.

"We knew what they were doing," Ms. Hale said, "and we supported them."

Even as the police had to contend with second-guessing on the streets, a team of city lawyers was briefing the City Council in private session on recommendations for how to avert a threatened federal civil rights lawsuit by the Justice Department, which has accused the police department of systemic misconduct.

And on Wednesday, officials are bracing for yet another demonstration, this one protesting the city's worst police corruption scandal in decades, in which officers have been accused of fabricating evidence and framing innocent suspects in a gritty precinct just west of downtown.

Today, some demonstrators, delegates and other convention participants expressed frustration at what they said seemed like overkill tactics in marches and demonstrations that were peaceful on the whole.

"We've been chased out of our public streets and treated as if our First Amendment rights don't mean anything," said Han Shan, 27, program director of the Ruckus Society of Berkeley, Calif., which trains protesters in civil disobedience, as he joined the youth march.

"This was a youth march devoted to equal access to decent education and the priorities of funding schools and teachers," Mr. Shan said. "We had such radicals marching with us as parents, teachers and high school students. I can't believe the response."

But David Johnson, 56, a delegate from Columbus, Ohio, and his friend Steven Lieber, 50, an alternate, both veterans of the 1970 Vietnam War protests at Kent State, said this generation of protesters left them puzzled and a bit disappointed.

"These protesters are not impressing me when they become violent," Mr. Lieber said today. "But they can only learn that through experience and through growing. If they were to use nonviolent civil disobedience, I would look at what their causes were, and they would get some worldwide recognition."

Mr. Johnson did take note of the sprawling security zone outside the convention and said: "The only time I see the protesters is on TV. I've called home, and my family thinks we're in a war zone."

The so-called shadow convention was holding its own meeting of outside-the-box thinkers, writers and comedians nearby, and it was rousted from its site early Monday evening when the police arrived to investigate what they said was a bomb threat and evacuated the building.

Arianna Huffington, an organizer of the gathering, said that no bomb was ever found, and that she had simply led her scheduled panel discussion featuring Gore Vidal into the street and made do.

"I think their whole response has been exaggerated and overkill," she said. "I think they were basically bringing the same mind-set to us that they were employing on the protesters. They were making a distinction between the people inside the Staples Center, who had to be protected at all costs, and the people outside whom they regard as a threat."

John Kristensen, a lawyer from Guildford, Vt., and a Bill Bradley delegate, said of the police presence, "I think it's overdone," but he added, "Of course, we live in Vermont, so we don't know what the problems of security are."

Mark Green, the New York City public advocate and a delegate from the state, was briefly stranded with other delegation members in the aftermath of the clash Monday night, and the police ordered the delegates who had wandered into the street looking for an overdue bus back onto the sidewalk. But he declined to question their tactics, adding, "It all seems peaceful compared to Giuliani."