Striking a blow for dissent
By ROBYN E. BLUMNER
Published May 1, 2005
Joseph Mayer, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, fought as a soldier for this nation but then was denied its freedoms because of a police department that viewed political protest as something to be squashed.
On Sept. 27, 2002, Mayer joined his 28-year-old daughter, Alexis, for a demonstration in Washington against President Bush's policies on Iraq. When they arrived at the protest site, Freedom Plaza, Mayer said that he and his daughter were directed by police across the street to Pershing Park, where several hundred demonstrators had already been sent. It was a weekend when the International Monetary Fund and World Bank were meeting in Washington, and the district's police department was making its presence known.
Then, without warning, Mayer said that he and Alexis found a police line closing in around the park, forcing them "through trees and over benches to avoid the charging line of riot cops with raised batons."
Mayer, who was arrested and spent 29 hours incarcerated, told his story during a hearing before the D.C. Council in October 2002. His experiences were echoed by computer expert Michael Eichler, who was part of a peaceful bicycle protest that day. Eichler told the council he spent "over two hours encircled by the police in the park, seven hours handcuffed in the back of a running metro bus, breathing in diesel exhaust . . . and 15 hours sitting hogtied on a mat in the police academy gymnasium."
There was no legal basis for their arrests nor for hundreds of others - a fact confirmed by a police internal affairs report and D.C. Council investigation. Still, the sweep was justified at the time by Mayor Anthony Williams, who said the arrests were "preventive" and "proactive," and by police Chief Charles Ramsey, who told the Washington Post that "these people that are apprehended are going to miss several protests . . . because they'll be behind bars."
Why am I bringing up such an old story? Because unlike other cities such as Philadelphia and Miami, where police earned plaudits for essentially shutting down the right to assemble when dignitaries were in town, Washington has decided to side with the Constitution. Inspired by the 400 wrongful arrests that September day, the D.C. Council has passed the "First Amendment Rights and Police Standards Act."
The act is the culmination of an 18-month investigation into the way the district's police department had been treating protesters when civil disobedience was expected. The 150-page report documented baseless arrests, the indiscriminate use of pepper spray, cruel detention practices and the use of undercover officers to infiltrate activist groups.
The resulting law addresses those abuses and returns our capital city to a place where raised voices are welcome. It reminds police that protesters have a protected right to be in public and to be close to their targeted audience.
Much of the credit for this groundbreaking legislation belongs to council member Kathy Patterson, who doggedly pursued the investigation and stewarded the act through the council despite opposition by the mayor and police chief.
The statute eliminates the permit requirement, replacing it with a "notice system" for large-scale demonstrations where advance planning might be necessary. This might just be semantics, but the new wording suggests that groups don't need "permission" to gather or march.
To address the increasingly militaristic response of police to protesters, the act prohibits the deployment of riot-geared officers except when there is "a danger of violence." In response to the problem of abusive police who refuse to identify themselves, making it impossible for victims to file complaints, the act specifies that all officers, even those in riot gear, must wear identifying badges and nameplates.
The act prohibits hogtying and directs that demonstrators be promptly processed after arrest.
If free speech is to survive, cities will have to quell the growing criminalization of dissent. Ninety percent of the protesters arrested outside the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York have had their charges thrown out, adjudication withheld, or been acquitted; and none of the 283 protesters arrested in Miami during the 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas meeting has been convicted. Illegitimate arrests are being tolerated if not encouraged, as police departments receive the message that it is more important to quiet the streets than to protect the First Amendment.
Bravely, Washington is reversing that priority.