Power

ACLU Files Lawsuit Against Baton Rouge Police Department

“Defendants have responded to peaceful acts of protest with unlawful restrictions on constitutionally protected activity and disproportionate deployment of militarized equipment and excessive force,” the complaint reads.

In the wake of Sterling’s death on July 5, a video of which went viral on social media, thousands of protesters took to the streets to engage in protest. Mark Wallheiser / Getty Images

A group of civil rights organizations filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Wednesday in Louisiana alleging that the Baton Rouge police have unlawfully infringed on the First Amendment rights of protesters who gathered to protest the recent death of Alton Sterling at the hands of police officers.

Plaintiffs include the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Louisiana, Black Youth Project 100, North Baton Rouge Matters, the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, and the Louisiana Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

Defendants include the City of Baton Rouge, the Baton Rouge Police Department, the Louisiana State Police, and the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Department, among others.

In the wake of Sterling’s death on July 5, a video of which went viral on social media, thousands of protesters took to the streets to engage in protest. In Louisiana, they were met, as alleged in the complaint, with a “military-grade assault on protestors’ bodies and rights.”

“Defendants have responded to peaceful acts of protest with unlawful restrictions on constitutionally protected activity and disproportionate deployment of militarized equipment and excessive force,” the complaint reads.

The lawsuit alleges that law enforcement officers have “escalated peaceful situations, impeded protestors’ entry or exit from demonstrations; threatened assault with chemical agents including mace and pepper spray; rounded them up in mass arrests; [and] engaged in physical and verbal abuse.”

The lawsuit additionally alleges that multiple protesters were “punished and wrongly arrested” for engaging in “constitutionally-protected speech.”

According to the complaint, about 200 people have been arrested in the past week during the Baton Rouge protests.

Those include prominent Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson.

“I witnessed firsthand as peaceful protestors were violently attacked and arrested, assault weapons pointed at them with fingers on the triggers, some dragged across the cement, their clothes ripped off of them,” said Alison McCrary, president of the Louisiana Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, as reported by WWL-TV.

“What I saw happening was an immediate threat to life. My and other demonstrators’ speech was chilled because of this event,” McCrary continued.

In addition to filing the complaint, plaintiffs filed a request for a temporary restraining order prohibiting the Baton Rouge Police Department and other defendants “from interfering with people’s constitutional protected right to gather peacefully moving forward,” according to a press release issued by the ACLU.

“The police didn’t do their job in Baton Rouge, again,” said ACLU of Louisiana Executive Director Marjorie Esman, according to KATC. “They are bound to protect us from harm, to keep us safe, to do everything possible before throwing someone to the ground or pulling the trigger,” she continued.

“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,” she said.

Esman concluded, “We can’t bring Alton Sterling back but at a minimum, the police can stop blocking our right to protest in his name.”