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News :: Civil & Human Rights : Crime & Police : Protest Activity |
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2004 NYC Republican National Convention: F.B.I. Is Seeking to Interview Jailed Activists |
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by Al Baker
(No verified email address) |
17 May 2006
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"We have overwhelming evidence that hundreds of protesters were unlawfully arrested during the convention and we look forward to working with the F.B.I. as it conducts its criminal investigation..." |
As part of a continuing criminal civil rights investigation of the New York Police Department, the F.B.I. is seeking to interview protesters who were arrested in 2004 during the Republican National Convention and then had the charges against them dismissed. Investigators are specifically seeking one protester whose case prompted the federal inquiry.
Agents from the New York office of the F.B.I. have sent a letter to the New York Civil Liberties Union asking for help in identifying and finding those whose arrests and prosecutions were dismissed based on contradictory videotape evidence.
"We are attempting to determine if any police officers' conduct violated federal civil rights statutes," said the two-page letter, dated May 11, which was sent by agents from the New York field office of the F.B.I.
In addition to being a broad appeal for help from the civil liberties group β which has represented demonstrators and filed lawsuits over the arrests β the letter bore in on one arrest that prompted John Conyers Jr., the ranking Democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee, to seek a Justice Department inquiry in April 2005 into the events of August 2004.
In that case, Dennis Kyne, who was accused of inciting a riot and resisting arrest β and who was one of the first of the 1,806 people arrested during the convention β had the charges against him abruptly dropped by prosecutors after a videotape of the arrest contradicted an account by the arresting officer, Matthew Wohl.
"Regarding Officer Whol (sic), we are attempting to locate Mr. Kyne and his attorney, and we are seeking to obtain any documentation of the arrest and the particular videotape of Mr. Kyne's arrest," the F.B.I. letter said. "We are also searching to find any other individuals who may have been arrested by P.O. Whol at the R.N.C."
Gideon O. Oliver, a lawyer who represents Mr. Kyne and two other people who Officer Wohl claimed to have arrested on the steps of the public library on Aug. 31, 2004, said he got the letter from the civil liberties union yesterday.
Mr. Oliver said he planned to respond to it. "To the extent that the F.B.I. is seriously looking into what happened that day, I am certainly encouraged," Mr. Oliver said. "But, obviously, a little discouraged by the timing, frankly."
Asked to elaborate, Mr. Oliver said: "The truth is, it has just been a really long time. My impression was that it was very obvious to the district attorney's office, in the middle of the trial, that Officer Wohl had not told the truth. So I am not sure why it is taking everyone else that long to figure that out."
The treatment of hundreds of thousands of protesters by the police remains a simmering issue nearly two years after the convention. Demonstrators and their advocates have said that several people were wrongly arrested. Last week, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, a city agency that monitors reports of police abuse, criticized two deputy chiefs for their performance during the convention, saying that because the chiefs did not use bullhorns, some of the arrests of 240 people at two demonstrations on Aug. 31 were unnecessary.
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly has defended the chiefs and said that hundreds of thousands of demonstrators dissented freely and openly in the streets during the convention as the police kept public order and fulfilled antiterrorism duties.
Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's chief spokesman, said an internal investigation had been opened into Mr. Kyne's arrest.
"The Police Department's Internal Affairs Bureau opened a case on the matter in September 2005 and has been working with the F.B.I. and the Manhattan district attorney's office since then," Mr. Browne said.
But Christopher T. Dunn, the associate legal director of the civil liberties group, to whom the F.B.I. letter was addressed and who provided it to Mr. Oliver, said the letter raised questions beyond the issue of Mr. Kyne's arrest.
Mr. Dunn said that police accounts of marches at East 16th Street, near Union Square, and on Fulton Street, both on Aug. 31, a day on which 1,100 arrests were made, deserved to be compared with the evidence.
"We have overwhelming evidence that hundreds of protesters were unlawfully arrested during the convention and we look forward to working with the F.B.I. as it conducts its criminal investigation," he said.
In the Fulton Street march, 227 people were arrested. Two months later, the Manhattan district attorney's office said it would not prosecute cases against them. Mr. Dunn said that he would ask the F.B.I. to look at the nearly 400 arrests made at the march near Union Square that he was seeking to have dismissed.
James M. Margolin, a spokesman for the F.B.I.'s New York office, declined to discuss the investigation or confirm its existence.
Mr. Kyne, 36, who lives in San Jose, Calif., said, "I am just a little disappointed it took them so long to get the investigation started."
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Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
