WASHINGTON — A federal court ruled yesterday that the District of Columbia
had unlawfully arrested about 70 people during an anti-war and anti-Bush protest
march on Inauguration Day 2005. The arrestees are now entitled to a trial
to determine the amount of the District's monetary liability to them.
The protest march began at about 11 p.m. on January 20, 2005, after an
Anti-Inaugural Concert held on Columbia Road, N.W. About 250 to 300
demonstrators were headed towards the Washington Hilton Hotel, where an
Inaugural Ball was in progress, when D.C. police blocked the march and
surrounded and arrested about 70 people in an alley, including at least one who
had come out of a bar and mingled with the demonstrators as the march passed
by.
While the demonstrators marched peacefully, some individuals in the area
did commit crimes, such as spray-painting on buildings, pulling newspaper
vending machines into the street, and breaking windows; rocks and bottles were
thrown at police cars. But the police were unable to identify the people
who committed those crimes. Instead, they arrested everyone in the alley for
rioting, and subsequently charged them with parading without a permit, though
they never had given any warning that the parade had to end or any opportunity
for marchers to disperse peacefully.
In a decision released yesterday, Judge
Ellen S. Huvelle found that the police violated the constitutional rights of the
protesters by arresting them without having evidence linking any individual
person to any crime. She explained that "a peaceful political protester
may not be punished for failing to cease his protected activity simply because
others associated with the assembly may have committed illegal acts," and that
"no reasonable officer could have believed that there was probable cause to
order a mass arrest of plaintiffs for parading without a permit absent fair
notice and an opportunity to comply."
"We brought this case to vindicate an
important principle," said Arthur Spitzer, Legal Director of the American Civil
Liberties Union of the National Capital Area, which filed the case jointly with
the D.C. Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. "When people march peacefully in
the street to support a political cause they should not be arrested. If some
people commit crimes, those people should be arrested, not their neighbors. If
police have a good reason to stop a march, they must give marchers an
opportunity to disperse, not simply arrest them."
Susan Dunham of the NLG
added, "The court's ruling reminds the police that the criminal acts of a few
persons at a demonstration do not make all demonstrators guilty of rioting and,
most important, that demonstrators have a right to continue protesting
peacefully despite the misconduct of others near or among them, unless police
for good reason order an end to the demonstration."
The decision in Carr v.
District of Columbia is at: https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/Opinions.pl?2008