Lawsuit Is Filed Over Detention of Protesters During GOP Convention

[rodeodance]

".....Ms. Stoneback said she was arrested as she was walking with a friend from Union Square to a designated protest area near the convention at Madison Square Garden.

She said the floor in the holding center was covered with grease, oil and other chemicals. During nearly 50 hours of detention, she said, she asked repeatedly for medical attention for an allergic reaction in which "my eyes were swelling shut, my nose filled up with fluid and I developed a persistent cough." ....


http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/112404E.shtml

Lawsuit Is Filed Over Detention of Protesters During GOP Convention
By Julia Preston
The New York Times

Tuesday 23 November 2004

Civil rights lawyers filed a federal class-action suit against the city yesterday claiming the protesters detained during the Republican National Convention were held too long and in "excessive, unnecessary and punitive" conditions.

The suit, filed initially on behalf of 24 people who were among more than 1,800 detained during the convention late this summer, contends that their constitutional rights were violated by arbitrary arrests and by harsh conditions at Pier 57, a former bus repair depot where they were held for as long as 48 hours on minor charges. The suit contends that the pier was contaminated with asbestos and toxic chemicals........

[Blaze Diem]

1. And "Tom the Felon Delay " will get to keep his Govt Job with all its

perks and skip by the White House security clearance issues. Can Tom Delay still VOTE with his FELON Conviction TOO??

ugly little prick.

[Califooyah Operative]

2. oh no! looks like its time for some tort reform! nt

[Cheswick2.0]

3. Look at this article...they kept one girl 2 days and her mother didn't

know where she was. They didn't just keep these people, they denied them their civil rights.

Tuesday November 23, 2004 3:16 AM

By LARRY NEUMEISTER

Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - Saying the city had created its ``own little Guantanamo on the Hudson'' during the Republican National Convention, a lawyer Monday filed a lawsuit on behalf of nearly 2,000 people arrested at demonstrations.

The federal lawsuit claims protesters and bystanders alike were rounded up in mass arrests without cause; were kept without access to their lawyers or families at an old bus depot used as a temporary detention center; and were exposed for days to cruel and inhuman conditions.

The lawsuit asks for unspecified damages.

``All that was missing were the orange jumpsuits,'' lawyer Jonathan C. Moore said. ``Under the guise of terrorism and the fear of terrorism, we are all losing our rights.''

Deputy Police Commissioner Paul J. Browne said the allegations were false and denied conditions were hazardous, noting police installed lights, ventilation, sanitary facilities and other amenities.

Among bystanders arrested were a 15-year-old diabetic girl on her way to a movie and a former vice president of Morgan Stanley who was riding her bicycle.

Barbara Friedman, who had encouraged her 16-year-old daughter's participation in a peaceful protest, said she could not locate her for two days. ``I just see all our civil liberties slipping away,'' Friedman said. ``It's very, very frightening.''

Moore said the treatment of those arrested violated ``a bedrock principle of our democracy that the police cannot simply sweep the streets because they find protest inconvenient or embarrassing.''

``They created their own little `Guantanamo on the Hudson' equipped with chain-link fences and razor wire and guards armed with machine guns escorting prisoners everywhere,'' he said.

Brown contended that all weapons were banned. ``In fact, the police commissioner surrendered his own gun before visiting the facility,'' Browne said in a statement.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/stor...4632146,00.html

[dbt]

4. Kick.

From a spit-shined, hobnailed jackboot.

:freak:
dbt