STATEMENT BY RNC PLAINTIFFS’ ATTORNEYS:
January 15, 2014
City Hall, New York City
1800 PEOPLE ARRESTED DURING 2004 REPUBLICAN NATIONAL
CONVENTION SETTLE LAWSUITS AGAINST NYPD
On behalf of the more than 1800 people who were unjustly arrested during the 2004
RNC, we are pleased to announce a global settlement of all but a handful of the lawsuits for false
arrest and violation of first amendment rights. The City has agreed to pay out $18 million in this
settlement. This is the largest settlement of civil rights cases arising from mass arrests of
protesters in US history. The City will pay $6,400,000 to 430 individual plaintiffs; $6,600,000 to
settle a class action on behalf of approximately 1200 people; and $5,000,000 to attorneys for the
individual plaintiffs. The attorneys will be contributing 10% of their fees to a fund to protect the
free speech rights of New Yorkers into the future.
The Arrests at the 2004 Republican National Convention
At the time of the 2004 Republican Convention, the invasion of Iraq had entered its
second year. New York City had been chosen for the Convention site to align the nominee with
the site of the tragic attacks of 9/11. It was widely known that the Convention would attract
many Americans who opposed the war and other Bush administration policies, and intended to
make their views known in a peaceful manner, just as people had protested at past political
conventions.
Despite projected fears that peaceful protests would be disrupted by “anarchists,” and the
Bloomberg administration’s mistaken conflation of large peaceful protest activity with terrorism
and violence, nothing of the kind materialized during the days of protest around the Convention.
Instead, hundreds of peaceful protesters were rounded up in mass arrests at numerous locations
around the City during the Convention, most of them on one day, August 31, 2004. On that day,
the first large group of protesters gathered near the World Trade Center site to conduct a peaceful
sidewalk march that had been called by the War Resisters League, a pacifist organization – the
protest had been featured in that morning’s newspapers as a place people could go to peacefully
express themselves. The protesters discussed their plans with the police before setting off on
their march with police approval, but 227 were arrested en masse before they had walked half a
block on the Fulton Street sidewalk next to St. Paul’s Church, across the street from Ground
Zero. The mass arrest is depicted on police videos that we have reproduced for distribution.
In 2012, Federal District Court Judge Richard J. Sullivan held that all 227 had been
illegally arrested: “The Court therefore finds that the police lacked probable cause to arrest the
Fulton Street protesters.” A thousand more people were arrested later that same day in similar
mass arrests. The Bloomberg administration made a calculated decision to conduct preemptive
arrests without probable cause, knowing that taxpayers would eventually pay for that decision.
Everyone arrested was held at a Pier on the Hudson River that had previously been used
as an MTA bus repair facility – cyclone fencing was used to create cages in a warehouse-like
area still covered with grease and brake fluid. Signs still hung from the walls warning workers to
wear hazmat suits. There was no heat, no place to lie down, and a handful of port-a-potties.
Protesters were held in these disgraceful conditions for up to 48 hours before being transported
to court facilities – long enough to exhaust them and keep them off the streets until after George
Bush was re-nominated. Many left with skin rashes and respiratory problems, and some
developed more serious medical conditions. Even during the course of the RNC, a state court
judge held the City in contempt for detaining arrestees longer than permissible.
Almost everyone arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and parading without a permit
had their charges dismissed, or were acquitted at trials. We expect many of them to be available
to speak directly to the media about their experiences.
The Lawsuits and the Settlement
Hundreds of people filed individual federal civil rights lawsuits. A class action was also
filed. The Bloomberg administration viewed the claims as a political challenge to policing
policies Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly were intent on defending, just as they have
defended their stop and frisk practices. They deemed peaceful protesters, “anarchists,” and
terrorists as a blended “tri-partite threat” to the City. But no terrorists were to be found among
people protesting on the sidewalks of New York during the RNC. Instead, the City’s policies fell
on people who, at worst, caused some crowded sidewalks and snarled traffic.
Just as the NSA has justified massive collection of information on millions of citizens on
the grounds that it will help catch terrorists (although there is no evidence it has done so); and
just as widespread surveillance of the private lives of peaceful Muslim New Yorkers has been
justified on the same grounds; the surveillance of activists and the arrests at the RNC are a
disgraceful example of disregard for the right to speak freely, an infringement of civil rights for
partisan political purposes. Dissent has nothing to do with terrorism, and the RNC experience
shows that widespread intelligence gathering on citizens paves the way to curtailing free
expression. The arrests of 1800 people had nothing to do with fighting terrorism, and everything
to do with a political agenda to silence protest while a political party nominated its candidate.
According to news reports, the City spent more than $16 million of taxpayer money
defending these lawsuits. The transparent objective of dragging the cases out until Bloomberg
left office has now been revealed, at a cost of $18 million more. The architects of the 2004 RNC
policies are now gone – as a new Mayor takes office in New York City, this settlement stands as
an emblem of the failure of those policies, from their initial inception to this settlement’s
conclusion.
While the settlement announced today covers the vast majority of RNC cases, the City
has yet to resolve some of the most egregious cases. We are hopeful that the new administration
will work swiftly toward a just result in these cases, so that this tainted legacy of the Bloomberg
administration can finally be put to rest.
2
Lastly, the new administration must seek to actively protect, rather than suppress, the
exercise of free speech and association in this great city. Those who peacefully dissent from the
actions of their government serve as the conscience of our community. They must be
encouraged, not preemptively arrested, caged or otherwise discouraged or abused.
The following attorneys represented plaintiffs in the RNC litigation:
Norman Frederick Best
Law Offices of Susan Douglas Taylor
575 Madison Avenue, 10th Floor
New York, NY 10022
Phone (212) 671-0122
Alan H. Levine
99 Hudson Street, 14th Floor
New York, New York 10013
Phone (212) 739-7506
Fax (212) 431-4276
Cell (917) 806-1814
[email protected]
Christopher Dunn
Associate Legal Director
New York Civil Liberties Union
125 Broad Street, 19th Floor
New York, NY 10004
Phone (212-607-3300, ext. 326
Fax (212) 607-3318/3329
Stephan H. Peskin
Tolmage Peskin Harris & Falick
20 Vesey Street
New York, NY 10007
Phone (212) 964-1390
Andrea J. Ritchie
990 President St., 1B
Brooklyn, NY 11225
Phone (646) 831-1243
[email protected]
Jeffrey E. Fogel
913 E. Jefferson Street
Charlottesville, Virginia 22902
Phone (434) 984-0300
[email protected]
Jeffrey A. Rothman
315 Broadway, Suite 200
New York, NY 10007
Phone (212) 227-2980
Cell (516) 455-6873
Fax (212) 591-6343
[email protected]
Scott A. Korenbaum, Esq.
11 Park Place, Suite 914
New York, New York 10007
Phone (212) 587-0018
Fax (212) 658-9480
[email protected]
Michael L Spiegel, Esq.
11 Park Place, Suite 914
New York, NY 10007
Phone (212)587-8558
Fax: (212)658-9480
Cell (917)301-3221
[email protected]
Alan D. Levine, Esq.
80-02 Kew Gardens Road, Suite 302
Kew Gardens, New York 11415
Phone (718) 793-6363
Fax (718) 520-8751
[email protected]
3
Martin R. Stolar
351 Broadway
New York, NY 10013
Phone (212)-219-1919
[email protected]
Susan D. Taylor
Law Offices of Susan Douglas Taylor
575 Madison Avenue, 10th Floor
New York, NY 10022
Phone (212) 873-0711
[email protected]
John Ware Upton
217 Broadway, Ste. 707
New York, NY 10007
Phone (212) 233-9300
john@uptonlawoffices,com
Rose M. Weber
30 Vesey Street, Suite 1801
New York, NY 10007
Phone (212) 748-3355
[email protected]
Karen Wohlforth
299 Broadway #1700
New York, NY 10007
Phone (212) 619-2457
[email protected]
4