POP/ROCK - July 25, 1988

New England-area police are less than pleased with Willie Nelson over the singer’s support of American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier--so displeased, in fact, that they were thinking of picketing regional venues in which Nelson is scheduled to appear. But a Rhode Island Superior Court judge, who refused to grant a temporary restraining order against the police, might issue stringent guidelines for any such picketing or protesting. Rodney Patterson, president of the Providence, R.I., Fraternal Order of Police, said police have no intention of protesting on private property, but would fight efforts to prohibit them from picketing beyond the parking lot entrances. New England theater owners want to keep the protesting cops off their (private) property. Peltier was sentenced in 1977 to two consecutive life sentences for killing two FBI agents.