(AP) NEW YORK – Four lawmakers sued the city Monday over its
handling of the Occupy Wall Street protests, saying police conduct is so problematic that the force needs an outside
monitor.
Wall Street handling
The city and police violated demonstrators’ free speech rights, used
excessive force, arrested protesters on dubious charges and interfered with journalists’ and council members’ efforts to
observe what was going on, the four City Council members and others say in the federal civil rights suit.
“This
unlawful conduct has been undertaken with the intention of obstructing, chilling, deterring and retaliating against (the)
plaintiffs for engaging in constitutionally protected protest activity,” says the suit, which was filed a day before Occupy
and labor activists planned a large May Day march.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has defended police handling of the
protests.
“This police department knows how to control crowds without excessive force. . They do allow you to protest,
but they don’t let it get out of hand,” he said after some council members complained about what they called police
brutality at a March Occupy demonstration.
While Occupy activists have gone to court before over particular episodes
in the movement’s contentious history with the city, the new lawsuit is a nearly 150-page compendium of complaints,
amplified by the council members’ participation. A local Democratic Party official, freelance journalists and Occupy
activists also are plaintiffs.
Their criticisms range from a police official’s much-discussed use of pepper spray on
penned-in protesters in September to the temporary removal of demonstrators from Manhattan’s Union Square in
March.
City council members and other elected officials have sued the city before — over a Bloomberg-led 2009 change
to term limits, among other things.
Still, the council members’ involvement in the Occupy suit helps dramatize its
argument that police oversight is so ineffective it warrants a court-appointed monitor. The officials want an independent eye
to review all of the more than 2,000 Occupy-related arrests and to explore the sometime closures of Zuccotti Park and some
other public spaces.
to expect in May Day “general strike”
Occupy movement
set for return to the streets
Using social media to
monitor Occupy movement
The four lawmakers — Letitia James, Melissa Mark-Viverito, Ydanis Rodriguez and Jumaane
Williams — said they felt they needed to pursue avenues beyond City Hall to address their growing concern.
“We need
accountability, we need relief . and we’re not going to just sit idly by,” Williams said.
He and Mark-Viverito were
among dozens of people who calmly sat down in a roadway near the Brooklyn Bridge during a Nov. 17 demonstration. Their
disorderly conduct cases are on track to be dismissed if they avoid rearrest.
Rodriguez, meanwhile, was accused of
resisting arrest while trying to get to the protesters’ encampment in lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park as police uprooted
them Nov. 15. He emerged with visible scrapes to his head and said police assaulted him. Prosecutors recently dropped the
charges against the councilman, saying they couldn’t secure the testimony of a key officer in the incident.
“I feel
that the NYPD misused its powers,” he said.
Some state legislators also have proposed an independent inspector for the
New York Police Department, citing the Occupy protests and other issues.
The lawsuit, crafted by attorneys Leo
Glickman, Yetta Kurland and Wylie Stecklow, also seeks unspecified damages and court orders about access to public spaces and
other issues in the case.
The lawsuit was filed the same day as another lawsuit by five individuals who said their
constitutional rights were violated when police officers kept them inside an area surrounded by metal barricades for nearly
two hours on Nov. 30 as they tried to participate in an Occupy Wall Street demonstration. The lawsuit in federal court in
Manhattan sought unspecified damages and class action status.
The city Law Department said Monday it had not yet seen
either lawsuit and was awaiting an opportunity to review each.