Mass arrests violated Fourth Amendment

On Sept. 27, 2002, the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), working with federal law enforcement authorities, undertook a political sweep and mass arrest of people who were engaged in, or in proximity to, First Amendment protest activities against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank and the war in Iraq. The police trapped and arrested nearly 400 protesters, National Lawyers Guild (NLG) legal observers, tourists and passersby in Pershing Park in downtown Washington, DC. Despite not being allowed to leave the park, and no order ever being given for people in the park to disperse, all those swept up were charged with "failure to obey," an unidentified order that was never given. The DC Circuit Court ruled that, "The mass arrest at Pershing Park violated the clearly established Fourth Amendment rights of plaintiffs...." The Court of Appeals ruling rejected the appeal by Chief of Police Charles H. Ramsey, in which Ramsey claimed that he should not be held personally liable for these sweeping constitutional rights violations, clearing the way for a trial on Ramsey's responsibility. The appeals court also upheld the district court's denial of qualified immunity to Assistant Chief of Police Peter Newsham, who also commanded the arrests. Plaintiffs, who are representatives of a certified class action, Barham et al. v Ramsey et al, are represented by Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Carl Messineo of the Partnership for Civil Justice (PCJ), also litigating on behalf of the NLG Mass Defense Committee. "A police badge is not a shield from personal responsibility. Those who use their authority to target and jail others for engaging in free speech and political action must know that they cannot act with impunity," stated Verheyden-Hilliard. "This ruling is a vindication for the Barham plaintiffs who have been steadfast in insisting on accountability at the highest levels for this massive violation of constitutional rights." Heidi Boghosian, executive director of the NLG said: "The unlawful tactics of law enforcement, including mass false arrests of persons exercising their First Amendment rights, are being challenged by NLG lawyers across the country. The government, by not seeking restraint of such behavior, has acted as a cheerleader for police who regularly use excessive force and abuse their authority to silence dissent. The ruling in Barham is a landmark step in holding top police officials accountable." The plaintiffs' lawyers successfully defeated the defendants' arguments that they could treat the protesters and those in proximity as a group, using a criminal enterprise theory to justify the mass arrests. The court agreed with the plaintiffs that the defendants had failed to show a required particularized probable cause for each individual taken into custody, noting that they had failed to present evidence that such probable cause existed for even a single one of the hundreds of arrests. PCJ has filed a series of lawsuits challenging the practices of the District of Columbia MPD, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies which they say participate in unconstitutional tactics to disrupt lawful protest and assembly and unlawfully use mass arrests as a means to sweep political activists off the street and truncate demonstration activity.