Protesters and people who said they were only bystanders claimed Friday they were penned in by police and wrongfully arrested during Ferguson-related marches as part of what a lawyer described as “constitutionally dubious” crowd-control tactics employed by the Los Angeles Police Department.
Erin Darling, co-president of the National Lawyers Guild‘s Los Angeles Chapter, said he and other legal observers of the protest saw LAPD officers give a dispersal order at one location, and use it later as a “blanket” pretext for arresting more than 100 mostly different protesters at a separate location.
Darling said the initial order to disperse was given at Seventh Street and Figueroa Boulevard near Staples Center. An hour later, about 130 protesters were rounded up and arrested at Sixth and Hope Street.
“In short, the LAPD is using crowd-control tactics that are constitutionally dubious,” Darling said. “The First Amendment is not something the LAPD can turn off because their patience has worn thin.”
The LAPD arrested 371 people this week during the protests, which some noted was greater than reported numbers in other cities.
One of the protesters, Kristin Delfs, said she did not hear a dispersal order prior to being arrested. Delfs said she and others who wanted to go home asked police where they should go, but were not given an answer.
“We just wanted to go home,” Delfs said. Instead, she was held for more than 13 hours and denied the right to post the $5,000 bail to be released, Delfs said.
Leigh Wiler, a nurse who said she was observing the protests Tuesday night on a sidewalk near her home, said she did not hear instructions to leave the area when was “stopped by the police in riot gear.”
Wiler said she told the police she lives nearby and wanted to go home, but the officer “grabbed me on the arm, turned me around and told me I had to walk a different way … I walked in the direction that I was told, but was stopped again” by another officer.
She told the officer she lived nearby, but “he told me I was lying” and arrested her.
“I’ve never been arrested before, I wasn’t part of the protest and I had no idea that I could ever be arrested for being on a sidewalk in my own neighborhood,” Wiler said.
“I spent a total of 27 hours in custody for walking on a sidewalk,” and her family was not allowed to post bail, she said.
Los Angeles Police Department officials did not immediately respond to the specific accounts by the lawyers and arrestees.
Cmdr. Andrew Smith said the arrestees’ statements “would be a great thing to bring up at court when they go face the judge.”
The LAPD went on a tactical alert this afternoon in anticipation of more protests. By late afternoon, several dozen protesters gathered at Great Park across from City Hall.
— City News Service