There are 155 days until Jan. 20, 2009.
One Protest, 52 Arrests and a $2 Million Payout
By JIM DWYER
August 20, 2008, The New York Times
The city has agreed to pay $2,007,000 to end a lawsuit
brought by 52 people who were swept up in a mass arrest along
a Midtown sidewalk during a protest against the invasion of Iraq .
They were charged with blocking pedestrians, but videotapes
show that at their most annoying, they might have slowed a
few people carrying coffee into work. Public order did not
seem to be in unusual danger that morning - certainly nothing
that called for rounding up 52 people, or spending millions of dollars.
Only two people were tried; they were acquitted, and charges
against the other 50 were dismissed.
The arrests were made on April 7, 2003, during the opening
days of the invasion of Iraq and right after the city
persuaded the Republican Party to hold its 2004 convention in
New York. The people arrested said their rights to free
speech had been abused, and sued the city and the police.
Now, five years later, the $2 million settlement is only part
of the bonfire of legal expenses. And only some of the costs
from this episode involve money.
Of the $2 million paid to the people who were arrested,
$1,057,000 is for legal fees and expenses owed to their
lawyers. The Law Department could not provide an estimate on
Tuesday of how much it spent on the defense, said Laura
Postiglione, a spokesman for Michael A. Cardozo, the city's chief lawyer.
Just about every Tuesday and Thursday for over a year,
witnesses were deposed under oath, part of the pretrial
process in civil cases, according to Sarah Netburn, a lawyer
with the firm Emery Celli Brinkerhoff Abady, which, along
with the Center for Constitutional Rights, represented many
of the people arrested that morning. The deposition
transcripts cost over $100,000, said Matthew Brinkerhoff,
another lawyer for the plaintiffs.
Among those deposed were 55 police officers and their
supervisors. Between preparation and testimony, many would
have lost two days of regular police work.
The city had five lawyers handling the case over the last
four years, along with a special appellate team. A
conservative estimate is that the city spent $1 million on
the defense, including the salaries and benefits of police
officers and lawyers, before running up the white flag.
“Although defendants believe that they would ultimately have
prevailed at a trial, the costs of going forward weighed in
favor of a settlement at this time,” said Susan Halatyn, a city lawyer.
But why were the arrests made in the first place?
That morning, two groups gathered on West 56th Street ,
outside the offices of an affiliate of the Carlyle Group, a
private equity firm that has holdings in defense industries
and employs many world figures, including the first President Bush.
One group of about 10 people planned to commit civil
disobedience by sitting in front of the building, on the
south side of 56th Street . The other group, of about 100
people, stood on the north side of the street, chanting.
Sarah Kunstler, 31, a lawyer, a filmmaker and the daughter of
the renowned lawyer, said she had gone to see if there were
possibilities of making a film about war protests. “I found
out I could get arrested for absolutely no reason,” Ms. Kunstler said.
A film editor, Ahmad Shirazi, 70, said he was in the group on
the north side of the street and had just finished speaking
with reporters for the BBC when he saw officers beginning to mass.
“All of a sudden, from the Fifth Avenue side, a huge number
of police officers entered 56th Street ,” Mr. Shirazi said.
“The protest was on the south side of the street. We were
standing on the north side of the street. They came directly
to us, they were in riot gear, and they surrounded us. They
made a semicircle around us, shoulder to shoulder, with their batons.”
“Then they started arresting us, one by one. At that point, I
got emotional - I could not believe in my country, in my
city, I could get arrested for doing absolutely nothing and
standing on the sidewalk,” Mr. Shirazi added.
Are there any lessons from the day? The Law Department said
the $2 million payout did not mean the police had done
anything wrong. 'This settlement was reached without any
admission of liability on behalf of the city and the
individual defendants,' said Ms. Halatyn, the city lawyer.
The Police Department did not respond to a request for
comment on the settlement.
Mr. Shirazi said that as he was being handcuffed for the
first time in his life, he told the officer that the plastic
cuffs were squeezing him. He said, ˜You should have thought
about that before you came out this morning. It was like a
dagger in my heart, that a police officer of my city would
come up with anything like that.”
E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com
No comments:
Post a Comment