Copenhagen:
At an abandoned beer warehouse in this city's Valby district, law enforcement officials have constructed an elaborate holding facility with three dozen steel cages to accommodate more than 350 potential troublemakers during a U.N. climate conference that gets under way here on Monday.
Critics call the holding pens - and a variety of other security preparations made as thousands of government officials, heads of state, environmental groups and assorted anarchists descend on the Danish capital - extreme.
The police say the reactions of the critics are overheated, if predictable.
"This is surely the biggest police action we have ever had in Danish history," said Per Larsen, the chief coordinating officer for the Copenhagen police force. "But I think the complaints are the kind we are very used to hearing in this country."
Officials have made it clear that they aim to keep the peace during the 12-day conference, organized under U.N. auspices. From new laws rushed through parliament allowing higher fines and extended detentions for those deemed unruly to public displays of newly acquired antiriot and emergency equipment, leaders here say they are preparing for the worst while hoping for the best. Meanwhile, a variety of protest and advocacy groups - some with obscure political lineage - have signaled in online postings and other public statements that they will not be cooperating.
Larsen said that about $122 million was being spent to secure the city and to fortify the Bella Center, a sprawling site southeast of central Copenhagen where more than 15,000 participants and onlookers will gather as negotiators forge the framework for an agreement to address climate change.
High steel fences atop concrete barricades surround the center, and vehicles can enter only through well-armed police checkpoints. The southern reaches of the Inderhavnen Canal, which runs just west of the center, are embroidered with concertina wire to prevent access by water.
Germany and Sweden have contributed vehicles and bomb-sniffing dogs, and Denmark has received permission from the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, to reintroduce border checkpoints should it be necessary.
On Thursday, the police set a car on fire as part of a demonstration of a newly acquired water cannon, which is also capable of dispersing crowds. Police officers from various parts of Denmark have been reassigned to Copenhagen, bringing the force here to around 6,500 officers.
In a reflection of security concerns, the police briefly restricted access to the Bella Center on Sunday as journalists arrived for a news conference. An officer who would not give his name said that the police were scrutinizing a suspicious object to make sure it was not a bomb. It turned out to be a suitcase filled with clothes.
Members of some human rights and environmental groups have said that the show of force could keep peaceful demonstrators at home.
"Obviously, the police have to be ready for whatever might occur," said Lene Vennits, general secretary for People's Climate Action, an umbrella organization representing dozens of Danish environmental and advocacy groups. "On the other hand, we think the rhetoric, with pictures of the new water cannon and the fires, is too much, and we are afraid that the ordinary Danish demonstrator will be frightened away."
Demonstrations, like a march from the city center to the U.N. meeting place on Saturday, will be permitted by the police at pre-approved sites or along specified routes. More spontaneous gatherings will also be tolerated, although the police issued a statement banning open-air meetings that "may constitute a danger to the public order."
The statement also stipulated that participants in public demonstrations "are not allowed to conceal their faces in whole or in part with a hood, a mask, paint or similar."
Despite the rules, several organizations are promising to test Copenhagen's definition of law and order. An organization called Climate Justice Action has announced plans to penetrate the Bella Center and "take over the conference for one day and transform it into a Peoples Assembly," according to a statement on the group's Web site.
A murkier organization called Never Trust A COP - a reference to the 15th Conference of the Parties, the official name of the U.N. meeting - promises on its Web site that members will "consciously attack the structures supporting the COP15" and "break through the lines of their police."