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 Many Summer Protesters Cleared 11/30/00 - by Debbie Goldberg - Washington Post PHILADELPHIA - When John Sellers was yanked off a Center City street and arrested on Aug. 2 while the Republican National Convention was meeting here, police painted him as a protest ringleader and presented a laundry list of 14 misdemeanor charges against him, and then the district attorney's office got him slapped with $1 million bail. But when Sellers walked into court on Nov. 14 to defend himself against the charges, prosecutors said they didn't have the evidence to make their case. All charges against him were dismissed. On Monday, misdemeanor charges against another 38 protesters were dismissed by Municipal Court Judge James M. DeLeon for lack of evidence. They were arrested on Aug. 1 at the Center City intersection of Broad and Spruce streets. The red, white and blue GOP banners are long gone, but cases involving hundreds of protesters arrested during the Republican convention are just starting to wind their way through the courts. And some civil rights attorneys say Philadelphia may end up paying a high price for what they contend was an illegal strategy to clear the streets of protesters while the Republican delegates, thousands of journalists and other visitors were in town. "The pattern here is that a number of people were arrested with absolutely no basis, and it is abundantly clear, when they come to court, there's no evidence," said Bradley Bridge, a lawyer with the city's public defender association, who is representing many of the protesters. Already, a civil rights lawsuit against the city and its police department has been filed by seven paramedics who participated in an umbrella group of protesters called the R2K medical collective. The paramedics claim they were stopped and searched, and that their supplies and personal items were confiscated by police in several incidents during the convention. None of them was arrested. Now that his case has been dropped, Sellers, 34, a career activist, is also considering suing the city and its police department for what he claims was a false arrest and an unreasonable bail. "I feel vindicated, and it's vindication for hundreds of others arrested, who were taken off the streets in an unconstitutional, preemptive, illegal strike by the Philadelphia Police Department to silence dissenting opinions," said Sellers, director of the Berkeley, Calif.-based Ruckus Society. He spent six days in a Philadelphia jail before his bail was reduced and he was released. Referring to the Sellers case, Cathie Abookire, a spokeswoman for Philadelphia District Attorney Lynn M. Abraham, said: "I can only tell you after we reviewed the case, interviewed people and looked at many, many hours of videotape, the evidence was not there to bring forth the case, so we withdrew the charges." Responding to questions about the arrests of protesters, Officer Carmen Torres, a police spokeswoman, said: "At this time, we are not offering any interviews or any information due to the fact there are several issues in litigation." In all, 404 protesters were arrested in Philadelphia during and immediately after the July 31 through Aug. 4 convention, Torres said. Of those, she said, 35 protesters were charged with felonies, 339 with misdemeanors and 30 with summary offenses, which are akin to getting a ticket. Of those charged with misdemeanors, nearly 100 protesters have accepted a pretrial offer from the district attorney's office to clear their records if they stay out of trouble for six months, said Shawn Nolan, a lawyer with the public defenders association, who is tracking the cases. The misdemeanor cases typically involve such alleged offenses as disorderly conduct, obstructing a highway and resisting arrest. Of those charged with felonies, some have seen their cases dismissed or reduced to misdemeanors, leaving about 18 protesters who have felony charges pending, most of them for alleged assaults on police officers, Nolan said. During the most active day of the protests, large bands of protesters roamed Center City, stalling traffic, overturning trash bins and damaging police cars. Several protesters got into a scuffle with Police Commissioner John Timoney, and a police officer accompanying him was hospitalized with a head injury. About a dozen other police officers were injured during the week. After the Republicans left town, city officials, particularly Timoney, received widespread kudos for their handling of the convention and the protests, especially in light of the chaos and mass arrests that had occurred during protests in Seattle and the District in the months preceding the Republican convention. But critics assail what they claim was a strategy by city officials to sweep the streets of protesters, particularly those they perceived to be leaders, to charge them with more serious offenses than would be typical in civil disobedience cases, and to seek huge bail amounts to keep protesters in jail until the Republican visitors' departure. The result of that strategy was to "deprive protesters of what we in America think of as our most fundamental value--liberty," said Stefan Presser, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. "There's no question the city is going to have to pay enormous recompense for what was done by the Philadelphia police." In particular, the bail amounts set for those described by police as protest leaders, including Sellers and Terrence McGuckin, were "unprecedented," said civil rights attorney David Rudovsky, who represents some of the protesters. "You don't get that for murder in this city. It was pure preventive detention for political purposes." McGuckin, 19, spent eight days in jail on $500,000 bail. He was convicted on Nov. 14 of several misdemeanor charges by a municipal court judge and sentenced to three months probation, but is appealing that ruling, Rudovsky said. The next closely watched trial will involve 75 people arrested during an Aug. 1 police raid at a West Philadelphia warehouse where the defendants say they were making--with help from four undercover state troopers--large puppets that were to be used as props. "Most of them, the trial will show, were simply making puppets, not... planning illegal activities," Rudovsky said. In municipal court, where many of the protest cases are being heard, several dozen activists filled the courtroom on Tuesday. Elisabeth Weaver, 20, who was arrested the day after the warehouse raid when she and two other protesters attempted to retrieve some of the puppets, had a sign pinned to her shirt that said: "Puppetry is Not a Crime." Weaver, a college student from Lancaster, Pa., was cleared of misdemeanor charges yesterday. |
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