Stymying law and order

The Washington Times ^ | 1-28-05 | Op Ed

[JZelle]

Four hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars plus some handsome lawyers' fees, and a crippling of police crowd-control tactics: That's the price D.C. taxpayers will pay for police incompetence in arresting demonstrators on Sept. 27, 2002. The settlement, announced this week, is a cave-in to far-left activists. It's great news for those bent on bringing Seattle-style chaos to the nation's capital, but very bad news for the rest of us who value public safety. On that September day, in the midst of an anti-World Bank protest downtown, police observed protesters flipping over newspaper stands near Pershing Park in Northwest and a fleet of bicycler-protesters crowding streets and sidewalks. The protesters were moving illegally without a permit. When they ignored orders to get off the road, police corralled about 400 of them in the park and arrested them for failure to obey an officer. But officers apparently failed to announce their intent to arrest clearly, so there were some non-protesters among the arrested. An internal police memo on the incident said the judgment to arrest the protesters was "made in good faith," but that the lack of warning was problematic, as were the arrests of the uninvolved.

[JZelle]

"The protesters were moving illegally without a permit".

Compare their treatment with those christian protestors in Philthadelphia!

[Renderofveils]

The police are already having trouble watching violent protesters. No, there's no trouble watching them, it's doing something about them breaking the law (violence is not a first amendment right) that's the problem. But as with everything else, the left doesn't mind the law being broken, as long as only they're doing it.