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 Warehouse owner's charges dropped 11/30/00 - by Linda K. Harris - Philadelphia Inquirer The District Attorney's Office withdrew all charges yesterday against the owner of the so-called "puppet warehouse" in West Philadelphia that was the scene of a mass arrest of protesters during the Republican National Convention. Michael Graves, whose trial on misdemeanor charges related to the roundup of 75 protesters at the warehouse on Haverford Avenue had been scheduled for Dec. 11, said that he was pleased that the charges had been dropped but that he should not have been arrested in the first place. "When they figured it out, they should have let me go immediately instead of keeping me down there," said Graves, who was jailed for 54 hours before being released without bail. "I had to spend thousands of dollars and had to go through all this aggravation, and they finally dropped the charges." He said that the turmoil had hurt his business and family life and that he was planning to sue the city. Jerome M. Brown, Graves' lawyer, had a motion before Municipal Court Judge James M. DeLeon to dismiss the charges. But before the judge could rule on it, Assistant District Attorney Joseph LaBar advised the judge that the case was being withdrawn. LaBar, who did not elaborate during the court proceeding, later said it was the right decision based on the evidence. Graves, 38, rented out part of his warehouse to protesters who said they wanted to use it as a factory to build a float, signs and puppets. They paid him $500 in rent. On Aug. 1, when police surrounded the warehouse and arrested everyone inside, Graves was taken into custody as well, even though he had an office in the warehouse, from which he runs his floor-finishing business, Oak Heart Wood Floors. In September, when other protesters arrested in the warehouse were offered a deal of three months' probation and no criminal record, Assistant District Attorney Charles Ehrlich said Graves was not offered the deal because "his involvement was more intense than others'." But during a pretrial hearing on Tuesday, Pennsylvania State Trooper Harry B. Keffer 3d, who worked undercover in the warehouse the week before the raid, said that Graves had done nothing wrong and that he had simply gotten caught in a bad situation. LaBar also withdrew the charges against Damon Umholtz, 31, Graves' former office manager, who showed up for work on Aug. 1 only to be swept up in the raid. Umholtz was not in court for the hearing but was represented by lawyer Kenny Young. "He's ecstatic," Young said. "He's happy it's done. He wants to get on with his life." Graves is still trying to make improvements demanded by the Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspection, which inspected his warehouse on the day of the raid and condemned it because of violations. Graves was not allowed to go back in once he was released from jail. "I knew there were repairs that I needed to do," he said. "I wanted to do that in the warm weather in the fall. Instead, everything was thrown into disarray." In other cases involving protesters, Municipal Court Judge Seamus P. McCaffery acquitted Natalie Trevino, 20, of Mount Laurel, and Franklin Norris, 43, of Louisville, Ky., of non-felony assault charges and disorderly conduct. They had originally been charged with felonies. |
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