(no subject)
On April 20, 2002, about 75,000 people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to demand an end to the war in Iraq, an end to U.S. aid to Israel, and an end to war and violence in the Middle East. During the protest, a group of eight anti-war activists left the rally and headed for their cars to get some food for lunch. The group was detained by D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers and taken to the parking garage of a building at 1275 K Street NW. None of the protestors was warned about their rights, and the D.C. police refused to give them access to an attorney.
The reason? The eight people were wearing black, which law enforcement officials thought made them violent anarchists. The eight had committed no other crime, had not been observed engaging in suspicious behavior, and had not been overheard discussing any crime.
While the D.C. police detained the eight in the parking garage, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) took over their interrogation. None of the protestors was warned about their rights, and the FBI agents refused to give them access to an attorney. The FBI agents proceeded to interrogate the eight people on videotape about their political and religious beliefs.
After their release, the eight victims sued the MPD and FBI, alleging a violation of their constitutionally guaranteed civil and criminal rights.
FBI and MPD officials categorically denied any such incident had ever taken place. MPD officials and officers said that although they had arrested the eight (and released them), no FBI agents had been present during the (what MPD described as) brief interrogation.
* * * * * *
Fast-forward to late Fall, 2008.
Attorneys for the protesters were preparing for a trial, to begin in federal court on November 30, 2008.
As the lawyers reviewed MPD records one last time, they discovered MPD logs that proved a secret FBI intelligence unit existed within the D.C. police department, and that the FBI agents had interrogated the eight protesters at length that day in the parking garage.
Monday, the District of Columbia agreed to pay $450,000 to the eight protesters. Each protester will receive $25,000, and the rest will go to pay legal fees. In addition, D.C. police were forced to agree not to allow outside agencies to question people in their custody without creating a formal record and log of the incident (including an incident chronology and Form 451 [a formal police complaint record]).
Four other very expensive civil cases are still pending against the city.
Your tax dollars at work, citizens!