Category Archives: Civil Liberties

When the Praetorians start preventing the press from doing its job, that's serious: Bush uses Secret Service to keep reporters from protestors.

But of course the Secret Service are not tasked with protecting citizens from being attacked for exercising their rights, so they cannot be blamed for inaction when people are kicked or otherwise attacked by other citizens.

James Gaites has an excellent first-person account of his recent experience of very civil disobedience during the Republican Convention. Death and Life in New York: Three Days in the City for an RNC Protester.

There is surely grist for the mill here for everyone. The police arrested many people whithout cause, including bystanders. They also penned up protestors and then arrested them for failing to disperse, having made it impossible.

Once arrested, it's obvious that at the very least NYC did not make much effort to process protestors either as quickly as the law required or as quickly as they could have, indeed managed (intentionally?) to put them on ice for the entire convention. And the outdoor pen in which people were held may have had biohazards that people were forced to sleep on. Sanitation was rough.

On the other hand, there were no systematic beatings, some food was provided eventually, and even people who were clearly guilty of parading without a permit were released without fines. No one disappeared, and now they are free to write about it and to litigate.

How do we score this? To call it a 'win' for civil liberties is to set the bar far too low. Yet, is the term 'political prisoner' really apt? If so, it's the mildest confinement regime for a 'political' I ever read about.

I am always skeptical about third hand stories, but less so when they have names attached throughout their provenance, and this one does. Here's a tale to make you sad at least, and maybe worried,

Detained for Refusing to Clap: i was dragged off the floor of the RNC, just as bush began his speech, by three cops because i refused to accept and wave an american flaglet. earlier, they had already called me and art s. away from our press seats because we were wearing t-shirts with slogans, but they couldnt decipher them, and couldnt find anything “wrong” so we were allowed to go back. . arts t-shirt read “pray for a secular society”, mine just had chinese characters and then the word Bush. i told them the chinese meant i love —bush. then when bush came, i got up, walked downstairs to the central arena, i had a permit to do so, was handed a flag, , said no thanks, and immediately felt a hand on my shoulders. two thugs and a secret service officer hauled me away. they took away all my documents, held me for an hour, called the immigration service to check on my status as an american citizen, took away my phone after i spoke to emily in german, “you dont speak in a language we cant understand here”, i was interviewed by five different cops, including a Good Cop, the secret service man, two immigration experts, and one real gangster. they were going to take away my purse when i persuaded the good cop to google me up on the internet before doing another thing. then he brought me my documents, and he and the original two thugs escorted me to the street, trying to make nice on the way.

When you can be arrested and gang-questioned for failing to wave a flag, then it's not the America I learned about in law school. But it does start to resemble some places I learned about in History class.

Update: Now auditioning for the role of brownshirt.

George Paine at Warblogging.com says that the fact that protestors got sprung realllly sloooowly, but faster than the cops wanted, is a sign the system worked. In one sense, of course, he's right: in a very unfree country protestors vanish, or get four years of hard labor.

Warblogging.com: Judge to City: You're in ContemptThe New York Civil Liberties Union and the National Lawyers Guild filed writs of habeas corpus with the State Supreme Court earlier this week. A judge responded immediately by issuing a writ ordering the release of detainees held for more than 24 hours. The city appealed and was granted a stay. But yesterday the case came before Judge Cataldo, who again ordered immediate release.

At noon, arguing before Judge Cataldo, the city corporation counsel said “We couldn't get everyone processed as quickly as we liked… We're doing our best.” Judge Cataldo immediately replied “I'm ordering that.”

Later in the hearing the judge told the corporation counsel that “These people have already been the victims of a process. I can no longer accept your statement that you are trying to comply.”

By 6pm the NYPD had released few demonstrators. It was at this point that Judge Cataldo grew frusterated. He ordered a $1,000 fine for every protester still behind bars.

An hour later there had still been no movement by the NYPD. “We're coming back again until this is settled,” the judge said. “Once again, the order is, release these people.”

Norman Siegel of the New York Civil Liberties Union complained to the judge that it was only protesters who were being disadvanted by the city. He noted that actual criminals were being arraigned within the 24 hour window the law provides. “The only people being disadvantaged here are the protesters. We're arraigning robbers who have only been in 10 hours.”

Finally, hours later, the city began releasing detainees. They were met by hundreds of well-wishers, including friends and family, who cheered their release.

The reason that so many protesters were held so long without charges is obvious. Charges against most protesters would simply not stick. They were caught up in police nets — literally — and the victims of arbitrary arrest. They were charged with minor transgressions such as “blocking the sidewalk”.

The system, with lots of support from civil libertarian lawyers and the judiciary, has worked. The protesters have been released — and many were released in time for George Bush's speech at the RNC. Unfortunately the taxpayers will literally pay the bill for the NYPD's illegal detention of these protesters. First we will pay Judge Cataldo's fine. Next we will pay to settle the lawsuits of those detained.

If the protestors win anything above token damages, then I'd score this a victory.

It seems the NYC cops may not just be sweeping up bikers and holding them in pens, but photographers, tourists and grandmothers too. Gotta watch out for them public library users!

(The NYCLU is working to try to sort out the mess.)

Does this incident undermine or support Robert Waldman's suggestion that,

I recall Michael Froomkin's null hypothesis that the USA is still a free country and the proposed test of this hypothesis “The Republican national convention and the protests it inpires seem like a decent field test of the hypothesis that it’s still a free country.”

I'd say the evidence so far tends to support the alternative but is statistically insignificant because of the possibility of a heteroskedastic disturbance term (that is this “commanding officer might be mentally disturbed).

arrest | Toneland describes an arrest — allegedly without any charges — for biking (in a very large group) on a public street. The arrest was followed by moderately unkind treatment that could be explained perhaps as cops coping with the expected chaos of the Republican convention, or could be seen as a punitive measure to 'send a message' to demonstrators.

Of course, this first person narrative is just one side of the story. Here's CNN's account, in which the police say the bikes were blocking traffic (by moving in traffic?). I thought you got a ticket for that, not 16 hours in a holding pen followed by a trip to the Tombs.

Interestingly, there's no suggestion the arrests were for demonstrating without a permit. In any case, the issue here isn't just the charge, or lack of a charge, but also how the bikers were treated.

One hears much worse stories about other countries, and indeed about this one. But we still can do much better than this.