DAVOS 2002
Police aggression is costing you money
> BY DYAN M. NEARY
Copyright © 2002 by The Earth Times. All rights reserved

Over the past three years, the rights of protesters in this country have been consistently violated by law enforcement officials, and it's starting to become costly to the public. Here in New York, the site of many protests against the World Economic Forum this week, unnecessary and sometimes illegal actions are being taken by police ordered to protect the elites of the Forum from people who demonstrated against them.

Recently, illegal police actions have entitled activists to substantial monetary awards following lawsuits. One suit, currently being finalized in court, involves activists detained in New York city jails overnight for non-violent protest.

"These were all minor offenses they were charged with," James I. Meyerson, a New York lawyer and member of the National Lawyers' Guild who worked on the case, told The Earth Times. "An overwhelming majority of the people were arrested for disorderly conduct. The rest were resisting arrest, a misdemeanor offense."

As a result of these lawsuits, on July 13, 2001 the New York Police Department rescinded a two-month-old policy of keeping people who had been arrested at political demonstrations in jail overnight. Usually, the people detained were not only non-violent, but provided the police with identification and had no outstanding warrants. Formerly, under such circumstances, the protesters would have received desk appearance tickets rather than incarceration.

"These were people put through the system who shouldn't have been put through the system," Meyerson said. "System" is a collective term for the entire process of arrest, court appearance, and detention--in one or a series of facilities. "Those individuals who were plaintiffs are now, through their lawyers, in the process of resolving it monetarily," Myerson said.

Earlier this year, activists settled a lawsuit against the city for being illegally subjected to strip searches for minor offenses which did not warrant them.

"There was a certain period of time when [former mayor Rudolph] Giuliani was trying to be Mr. Crackdown," said Alex Williams, 29, a New York-based activist. When an empty building on Fifth Street was occupied by activists, Williams said, "all in the squat were evicted, we were all strip-searched, and everyone there was being arrested for a misdemeanor."

Eileen Clancy, who assisted Meyerson with the New York cases along with another lawyer, agreed. "The situation is that cops have been doing this for years," she says. Another lawyer, Jonathan Moore, got involved after the police involved in the 41-bullet killing of Ahmado Diallo were acquitted. "On the third night after the Diallo verdict, Moore took this on," Clancy said. "Protesters were held overnight [in] what was an unconstitutional attempt to discourage complaint."

Members of the People's Law Collective, the cooperative effort of legal workers and law students based in New York, in light of what they feel are absurd tactics of arrest targeting demonstrators, have worked to organize legal support for demonstrators. Activists were advised to bear the Collective's phone number on their arms.

"We've had different responses from the police, and some have been very cooperative," says Mac Scott, a paralegal working with the Collective. "However, the police have also been putting forward a counter-campaign to portray the demonstrators as terrorists and build up a militaristic response to the protests."

During the various localized activities occurring in parallel with the World Economic Forum, police have had confrontations with protesters. Friday night, at a Lower East Side protest outside Charas BOHIO, a community and Puerto Rican cultural center that had been recently closed and boarded up, several in the crowd of approximately 80 people began to remove one of the wooden boards. Police officers stationed around the block on East Ninth Street charged the protesters.

As this reporter reached for her camera, with press pass prominently displayed, one officer pushed her from behind, knocking her to the ground. The reporter was injured. Four persons were arrested at the site, at least two of whom were in their early teens. One was beaten on the ground with a night stick before being taken away. Police laughed when reporters took their picture, and one said, "Be sure to get my good side."

Charles, an independent journalist from Seattle, was taking pictures of signs related to Osama bin Laden in a car window in the vicinity of a police van. Five minutes he was issued a summons for jaywalking. More than eight units, or 25 police officers, surrounded Charles to give him his ticket. "We counted at least 10 jaywalkers as they were talking to us," Charles said later. "I asked why they weren't going after them and Captain Hardiman said it was because he was dealing with me, and that the 25 cops were backing him up."

Another activist said he was playing a drum with two other men outside a press conference Monday and was accosted by police about the "noise pollution." The activist argued that the drum did not qualify as amplified sound, but the officer, Sergeant John A. Curry, threatened to arrest him if he did not stop playing the drum.

Questioned later, Curry told The Earth Times that the drum was an example of "unreasonable noise," comparable to that of an incessant whistle. But does a samba drum qualify as "unreasonable noise?"

"It's really at the discretion of the officer at the scene," he said. The charge, he explained, is an unclassified misdemeanor worthy of arrest. "It's definitely enforceable," he said, "and I think it's still a good law." Lawsuits resulting from such actions are not specific to New York, either. Mass mobilizations like those in Seattle and Philadelphia were sites of scores of illegal actions against demonstrators.

A major class action lawsuit in Seattle involving 500 people, to which thousands may be added, was filed against the state for similar first amendment issues during the WTO protests in 1999. Some suits charged authorities with infringing on people's right to non-violent protest, police brutality on the street--with chemical weapons--as well as subsequent illegal arrests and incarceration.

In August 2000, Philadelphia police particularly targeted a warehouse wher puppets were being constructed, surrounded it, and--without a warrant- arrested everyone inside. Other persons were picked up on the street because, having cell phones and radios, they were seen as ringleaders; two of them were released on bail amounts of $1 million.

Lawsuits were filed in those cities following the events, and activists now stand to gain millions of dollars. Some individuals have already won several thousand dollars after settlements.

For some, such instances of brutality provide still more examples of the absurdity of police aggression when it comes to political activists. When it comes to peaceful protests, "The National Lawyers Guild and the Law Collective will be on the streets every day, and maintaining litigation," Scott declared. "We will not stand for the curtailing of civil liberties, police misconduct and police brutality."