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TRIAL UPDATE: June 2, 2004
Legal Challenge To NYPD Protest Policies Begins In Federal Court
June 2, 2004 -- The New York Civil Liberties Union trial challenging police practices against protesters is underway in a federal district court in Manhattan.
In his opening statement in the evidentiary hearing, Christopher Dunn, Associate Legal Director of the NYCLU, called for an injunction against the City’s heavy-handed police practices. Dunn stressed that the NYCLU is especially concerned about their impact on the right to protest when the Republican Convention convenes in New York City at the end of August.
A number of other witnesses testified before presiding U.S. District Judge Robert W. Sweet, including Jeremy Conrad and the wife of the late Jeremiah Gutman. Both are plaintiffs in NYCLU’s lawsuits. NYCLU President Claudia Angelos, Civilian Complaint Review Board Chair Hector Gonzales, and Leslie Brody from the National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Committee also testified.
In her testimony, NYCLU’s Executive Director Donna Lieberman reported on the hundreds of complaints to NYCLU about the NYPD policies that made it impossible for “tens of thousands of people to get to the rally on First Avenue. She also described the objections of rally participants to being “herded into pens like animals.”
On Thursday, June 3, United for Peace and Justice Coordinator Leslie Cagan, plaintiff Ann Stauber, Rev. Earl Koopercamp and several members of the NYPD are scheduled to testify. They include the Commanding Officer of the Mounted Unit, Chief Bruce Smolka, line officers assigned to patrol a barricade and a pen; and the captain responsible for a critical section of the pens at the rally.
The NYCLU’s lawsuits against the city challenge current demonstration practices which are expected to be used at the upcoming Republican National Convention in August.
The five specific NYPD tactics are:
• the NYPD’s denial of public access to demonstrations through the use of barricades and police officers to close sidewalks and street leading to demonstration sites;
• the use of horses to forcefully disperse peacefully assembled demonstrators;
• the use of pens made of interlocking metal barricades to confine demonstrators;
• the searching of the bags and possessions of people seeking to attend demonstrations and being forced to enter NYPD pens, and
• the prolonged detention in vans without access to food, water or bathroom facilities of demonstrators charged with minor offenses.
Copies of related legal documents can be accessed by choosing from the options in the right-hand column.
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