ACLU sues Baton Rouge police over protests

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and local advocacy groups are suing the Baton Rouge Police and other local law enforcement groups, accusing them of using excessive force and verbally assaulting those gathered to protest the shooting death of Alton Sterling by police. Over a three-day period, police arrested 200 protesters and were assailed for their heavy-handed tactics.

Javier Dunn, 24, said he was protesting near BRPD headquarters when officers from that agency who were wearing riot gear pulled him into the street and began beating him. The defendants named in the lawsuit include the city of Baton Rouge, the Baton Rouge Police Department, Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie Jr., the Louisiana Department of Public Safety, Louisiana State Police Col. Michael Edmonson, the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Department, East Baton Rouge Sheriff Sid J. Gautreaux III, Baton Rouge Mayor Kip Holden and District Attorney for East Baton Rouge Parish Hillar C. Moore III, the Times-Picayune notes. “Well, this is the reason, because we had credible threats against the lives of law enforcement in this city”.

As expected the protesters were treated as enemies of the state as hundreds of them were arrested despite no reports of anti-law enforcement violence from the demonstrators anywhere in the country. Eight handguns and a BB gun were stolen. Muflahi says he was only released from the police vehicle after repeatedly telling police he needed to use the bathroom, and even then, the court documents say, he was not allowed into the store to use it but was forced to pee on the side of the building, in plain public view.

Detectives have arrested two other suspects in the case, including a 13-year-old boy. They called on a fourth suspect to turn himself in.

It wasn’t immediately known if those arrested had attorneys. Police are defending their actions after a fraught week of nationwide debate and sometimes violence following the police shooting deaths of two black men; a deadly sniper attack on officers in Dallas, Texas; and an alleged plot to harm Baton Rouge’s own officers.

– Authorities used “unconstitutional levels of force, including physically tackling nonviolent demonstrators and use mace, taser charges, and/or pepper spray on nonviolent protesters”.

Earlier Tuesday, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards defended the police response. “Yet Alton Sterling is on the long list of Black people killed needlessly by our nation’s police, and protests in his honor have turned into circuses of violence where the First Amendment is tossed aside”.

“The pattern is clear: Federal and local law enforcement target the First Amendment-protected activities of social justice movements because they pose a political threat, not a violent one”, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, the executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, said in a column for AlterNet website Tuesday. They also say they have recovered some weapons from protesters, and the governor said one police officer had his teeth knocked out because of a rock.