THE LEDGER-STAR
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 6, 1995 TAG: 9501060648
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Short : 50 lines
If a package arrives smelling like shoe polish or almonds, call the police to open it, U.S. marshals recommend in a list of security tips they are hand-delivering to every abortion clinic in the nation.
Eight pages of such advice and emergency procedures were prepared by the U.S. Marshals Service to help clinics respond to rising anti-abortion violence. Describing suspicious packages that should prompt an immediate call to local police, the marshals wrote, ``Many explosives smell like shoe polish or almonds.''
President Clinton ordered a stepped-up federal effort to protect abortion providers after two employees were killed at suburban Boston clinics and a Norfolk clinic was shot at last week. After the killing of a Pensacola, Fla., abortion doctor last summer, marshals had been assigned to protect up to two dozen clinics around the country.
Prosecutors assigned to a federal abortion violence task force have begun searching for links between John C. Salvi III, the 22-year-old hairdresser charged in the Boston and Norfolk cases, and advocates of anti-abortion violence.
The government soon will file several civil lawsuits to keep abortion protesters from threatening doctors, Associate Attorney General John Schmidt told a news conference Thursday. The first such suit under a 1994 clinic-access law was filed Wednesday in Cleveland against an Ohio man accused of threatening to kill an abortion doctor and trying to run him off the road.
And Attorney General Janet Reno implemented Clinton's order that each of the 94 U.S. attorneys set up a task force with state and local law enforcement to deter and prosecute abortion violence.
``We're very encouraged. It's clear they are doing more, but we still need more protection at clinics,'' said Eleanor Smeal, head of The Feminist Majority Foundation, which runs a clinic protection program. ``We need a combination of more federal marshals, and more local and state officers. They could call the National Guard if necessary.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
CLINIC TIPS
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB