Lackawanna officials say troops in city was bad idea

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http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/744712.html?imw=Y

Federal, local police arrested the six men without incident
By Lou Michel
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: July 26, 2009, 7:51 AM / 18 comments

Former Vice President Dick Cheney not only proposed to send U. S. soldiers into Lackawanna to arrest the Lackawanna Six but also wanted to declare them enemy combatants, which could have put them in front of a military tribunal.

Cheney and ex-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld argued that the six young men be declared enemy combatants, while former Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III successfully argued against it, a retired high ranking federal law enforcement official said Saturday. snip

Lackawanna officials and citizens in the city’s First Ward, home of the Lackawanna Six, uniformly said it would have been a serious mistake to send soldiers into the city, pointing out that federal and local police succeeded in making the arrests in 2002 without incident.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less of the Bush administration,” Lackawanna Mayor Norman L. Polanski Jr. said in reacting to Cheney’s proposal to send in the troops. “The federal agents did their job and the Lackawanna police did their job. We didn’t need the military coming in. The community reacted cautiously, and nobody got out of hand or made outrageous statements.”