Dear Mayor of Key West, and dear Chief of Police of Key West, I'm not a journalist, just an ordinary, run of the mill US Citizen, and I am wondering what the cowboys are doing in Florida! I am amazed, but ill impressed at the actions reported by on-line journalist Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>. Your town lies 90 miles north of a Communist dictatorship, but it would seem to have been swept south by ill winds of fear and paranoia. If there is a RIGHT which Americans take seriously, hold near, and very dear, it is the First Amendment right of Freedom of the Press. For Shame, Key West, for actions as brutish as Tienaman Square! Your arrest of Dennis Cooper reflects either fear of exposure of worse wrongs than Cooper has reported, or a total lack of understanding or respect for the US Constitution. In light of the recent election results coming out of Florida, I suspect it is a combination of the two. Anthony Mournian San Diego, California "Police in Key West, Florida have arrested a newspaper editor for printing an article that criticized an internal police investigation, according to an Associated Press report. This brutish action by police and prosecutors should be widely denounced. As of this afternoon, the Key West newspaper's site at kwest.com was still up (I read what appears to be one of the articles in question at http://kwest.net/~kwtn/local_news/01-06-15-KWTN-FDLE_Investigating_Police_In...). But while the server is still alive -- it responds to ping requests -- connections to port 80 are now refused. Unfortunately, the article is no longer in my cache. It looks like the editor, Dennis Cooper, is being prosecuted for allegedly violating a state law. Under Florida law, it's a crime to disclose information about a police investigation -- even if you're the person who had filed a complaint alleging police wrongdoing, as Cooper seems to have done. You can find contact information for Key West officials here: http://www.keywestcity.com/directory.html http://www.keywestcity.com/depts/police/policetelephone.html I've copied the mayor, the chief of police, and other officials. If they would care to reply, I would be happy to extend them the usual courtesy of distributing their response unedited. If anyone puts up a mirror site with the article, please let me know. And I urge you to write to the city officials copied above. (BTW I have verified that the below article did run on the AP wire.) -Declan ---