Demonstrators Were Held Illegally, Judge Rules

This was harsh. Two days in a holding pen is a long damned time. And, naturally, the police lied about it.

NEW YORK, Sept. 2 — A criminal court judge ordered the release of hundreds of anti-Bush protesters Thursday, ruling that police held them illegally without charges for more than 40 hours. As the protesters began trickling out of jail, they spoke of being held without access to lawyers, initially in a holding cell that had oil and grease spread across the floor.

Several dozen of those detained said that they had not taken part in protests. Police apparently swept up the CEO of a puppet theater as he and a friend walked out of the subway to celebrate his birthday; handcuffed two middle-aged women who had been shopping at the Gap, and arrested a young woman as she returned from her job at a New York publishing house.

[…]

Throughout this week, Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne had insisted that just a few dozen protesters had spent more than six hours behind bars without being charged or released. On Thursday, Browne acknowledged for the first time that large numbers of demonstrators had endured long detentions. But he blamed them for overwhelming the police department.

“It’s a new entitled, pampered class of demonstrators who want to engage in civil disobedience but don’t want to be inconvenienced by arrest processing,” Brown said. “There’s a lot of reasons for a holdup. If you were in a group this morning you are going to go through the process very quickly; if you were arrested with 200 people it’s going to take longer.”

[…]

Michael Sladek, who owns a film production company in Brooklyn, was arrested in Midtown two evenings ago as he photographed the police and demonstrators. He spent 48 hours in custody without access to a phone before he was charged with obstructing a pedestrian — an administrative violation — and released.

“For us, it was very clear this was a detention to keep people off the street,” Sladek said outside the jail. “And the saddest thing was that so many people had nothing to with protesting the convention.”

This is terrible, but I must say that I’m proud of the people who are willing to engage in acts of civil disobedience to preserve their right to free speech. Use it or lose it.

The innocent bystanders who were swept up and held for more than two days should sue the City of New York. There is no excuse for keeping people that long without charging them. None.