Sam Jewler was one of five members of Occupy D.C. arrested April 13 outside a Bank of America branch. (Photo by Anonymousegray)
A group of demonstrators affiliated with the Occupy D.C. movement are suing the Metropolitan Police Department and Bank of America over what they say were unlawful arrests during several days of protests outside a bank branch in downtown D.C.
Members of Occupy D.C. started rallying outside the Bank of America at 1090 Vermont Avenue NW, a block from the group’s former lodge at McPherson Square, on April 10, with some bringing sleeping bags and pajamas as devices to protest home foreclosures carried out by the bank. (The demonstration was nicknamed a “sleepful protest.”) Over the next three days, police officers made 12 arrests, charging the activists with unlawfully blocking the sidewalk.
All the charges were later thrown out, but the protesters, in a suit filed yesterday in U.S. District Court, charge that the arrests themselves were unlawful and the result of a conspiracy between MPD, Bank of America employees and Akridge, the company that owns the building at 1090 Vermont.
“We have information that there was a meeting between the defendants,” Jeffrey Light, the protesters’ lawyer, says in a phone interview. “They were talking about how to remove the protesters after acknolwedgeing they weren’t doing anything disruptive. They were trying to get rid of them.”
The suit charges that on April 10, Akridge representatives and an unnamed Bank of America vice president conferred with an MPD lieutenant about how to remove the protesters. Light says he received an email from someone with knowledge that this meeting took place.
The Occupy D.C. members are seeking unspecified damages over what their suit argues was an abrogation of their First Amendment rights to free assembly. Considering the width of the sidewalk, Light contends, the protesters left ample berth for anyone passing by or entering the bank.
“It’s a pretty big sidewalk,” Light says. “If that is how police are going to interpret it, they should be arresting everyone near my office in line for the food trucks.”
Light also says that at the meeting questioned by the suit, at least one participant said the demonstrators had been well-behaved and quiet. “Even if they don’t do anything wrong, they still intended to remove the protesters,” he says. The suit also contends that at one point during the protests outside Bank of America, a police officer seemed to acknowledge the demonstration’s legality. “We know it’s not illegal,” the complaint reads.
Gwendolyn Crump, an MPD spokeswoman, says she refuses to comment on impending litigation.
