D.C. Sued Over Response to Inaugural Protesters

The American Civil Liberties Union filed three lawsuits yesterday against the District, alleging that D.C. police made false arrests and indiscriminately used pepper spray in cracking down on demonstrators during last year's presidential inauguration.

The confrontations between protesters and police during and after the inaugural parade -- which was held a year ago today -- were more scattered and less intense than those in 2001 when President Bush first took office.

But in the lawsuits, filed yesterday in U.S. District Court, the ACLU alleges that police went overboard in their response to isolated instances of lawbreaking and ended up violating the rights of peaceful demonstrators and bystanders.

"People who come to the nation's Capital to demonstrate, or to observe major public events, are supposed to be protected by the police, not be assaulted and arrested," Arthur Spitzer, legal director of the local branch of the ACLU, said in a statement. "Soaking people with pepper spray is not a game as the D.C. police seem to have treated it on Inauguration Day last year."

Traci L. Hughes, a spokeswoman for the D.C. attorney general, declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying the city would review the claims and respond in court.

After D.C. police arrested hundreds of anti-globalization protesters in Pershing Park in 2002, the department's actions were criticized by civil liberties groups and several D.C. Council members, who said officers had failed to provide adequate warning to the crowd in the park. The incident led to lawsuits against the city and senior police commanders.

The District settled one of those suits last year, paying each of the seven plaintiffs about $50,000 and agreeing to new arrest procedures at mass demonstrations. Chief Charles H. Ramsey also apologized to each of the plaintiffs as part of the settlement.

Another of the lawsuits was in the news last week when a federal appeals court upheld a lower court ruling that Assistant Police Chief Peter J. Newsham can be held personally liable for his role in ordering the arrests. The appellate court said that Ramsey may also be liable but that it did not have enough information to rule on him.

The plaintiffs in yesterday's lawsuits bring up some of the same issues that arose in the earlier litigation.

The first case, Carr v. District of Columbia , is a class action filed on behalf of several dozen people arrested during an impromptu late-night demonstration in Adams Morgan. In the lawsuit, the ACLU says many of the people who were arrested were bystanders or observers, not participants in the march. Rather than identifying individual lawbreakers, who were overturning newspaper boxes and spray-painting walls, police surrounded a large group and arrested everybody without first ordering people to disperse, the lawsuit alleges.

Seventy-two people were arrested on allegations that they paraded without a license, and all but five were released after paying a $50 fine. The others were released after being given a court date or after being held overnight.

The second case, Student v. District of Columbia , also stems from the Adams Morgan incident. The plaintiff, Barry Student, was a reporter and photographer for Indymedia, which describes itself as a collective of independent media organizations "offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage."

Student was at a concert that preceded the protest march and decided to record the demonstration, according to his lawsuit. When police confronted the marchers near Belmont and Columbia roads NW, Student tried to identify himself as a journalist covering the event, according to the lawsuit.

He was ordered to turn back with the marchers; he did but was taken down by a police officer, who used pepper spray on him, handcuffed him and arrested him, according to the lawsuit. Student refused to pay the $50 fine, and prosecutors later dropped a charge against him. Although his camera and press credential were returned, the video he shot that night was not, his lawsuit said.

The third case, Kaddura v. John Doe Officers , was filed on behalf of four people who say they were pepper-sprayed by officers stationed near the Willard InterContinental Washington during the inaugural parade. The four plaintiffs say they and other people were pepper-sprayed despite doing nothing wrong.

The area in front of the Willard became a flash point for confrontations, especially after demonstrators toppled some of the chain-link fences erected to prevent people from storming the parade route.

But the plaintiffs say the fences were back up when officers unleashed drenching bursts of pepper spray through the fence and into the crowd on the other side.