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City agrees to settlement for arrest methods { April 16 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/16/nyregion/16contempt.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/16/nyregion/16contempt.html
April 16, 2005
City to Pay $150 a Person in G.O.P. Arrest Settlement
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
A legal dispute over the city's arrest and detainment methods during the National Republican Convention has been settled, with the city agreeing to pay $231,200 in legal fees and a small fine, and lawyers for the protesters dropping their case against the city.
The settlement was hammered out over the past five days between lawyers from the city and legal groups representing the protesters, including the Legal Aid Society and the National Lawyers Guild. It gives 108 plaintiffs $16,200, or $150 each, with the remaining $215,000 going for legal fees.
The agreement appeared to score a win for the protesters, who had pressed their case for months, saying the city held people too long on purpose so that they would not embarrass city leaders during the convention. The city has strongly denied those charges, saying that the circumstances were unusual and that most cases were processed on time.
The city, for its part, said the settlement was not an acknowledgement of wrongdoing and that the plaintiffs were being given far less than the $250 the law allows. In all, 140 people took part in the legal action out of the 560 who were ordered released.
Though the settlement drops the criminal contempt case against the city, it does not prevent people from filing civil suits. A spokesman for the city's comptroller office said 570 notices of claim have been filed, totaling $859 million. In addition, a class action lawsuit was filed late last year in federal court in Manhattan, lawyers said.
"This is the first of many settlements that will hold the city accountable for what we believe is a violation of the rule of law during the R.N.C.," said Norman Siegel, a lawyer for some of the plaintiffs.
Daniel L. Alterman, a lawyer with the National Lawyers Guild, said the case provides "a blueprint of how the Police Department operated," and "gives us one-up on how judges will look at" convention cases.
A lawyer for the city, Gail Donoghue, called the agreement "a genuine compromise" and reiterated the city's position that the convention was an extraordinary circumstance and that most of the 1,806 people arrested during the convention were processed quickly.
"The system reaches a certain point and there is a saturation, a bottleneck," Ms. Donoghue said. "There was nothing anyone could do about that. That's something that doesn't happen every day."
The case dates back to the last days of August, when hundreds of people were detained and held on a West Side pier. Some were kept for as long as two days or more, exceeding the 24-hour legal limit. During the last two days of the convention, Justice John Cataldo of State Supreme Court gave the city a series of deadlines to bring prisoners before the court or release them. When the city did not comply, the judge held it in contempt.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs blamed the Police Department, which they said delayed bringing those they arrested to court, even though the city said in the weeks leading up to the convention that it was prepared to handle the flood of arrests that it was expecting.
A Police Department spokesman yesterday declined to comment on the settlement, saying the department was deferring to city lawyers.
Michele Maxian, a lawyer on the case from Legal Aid, said:
"It was the worst performance by the police I had ever seen in my 30 years. The courts were fully staffed and were essentially empty of defendants. That's what infuriated the courts."
Ms. Donoghue countered that the police moved as fast as they could to comply with the order, but numerous agencies, like medical units and court administrators, were involved in the processing and the sheer numbers of people temporarily overwhelmed them.
After holding the city in contempt and saying it could be fined for every person whose release had been delayed, Justice Cataldo ordered a hearing to give the city a chance to explain why it was not in contempt. Judge Cataldo had said the fine could be as high as $1,000 a person, though the legal limit is $250, lawyers said.
The settlement comes on the eve of that scheduled hearing. Mr. Alterman said a hearing would have been uncomfortable for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who is running for re- election this year, as senior police and city officials would have been called to testify.
"They would have to parade them" in court, he said, referring to the officials. "To get up there and tell the world why they did what they did."
Ms. Donoghue strongly denied that politics had anything to do with the settlement, saying that Judge Cataldo had ruled that the hearing would be focused narrowly on the hours to which his order applied and that lawyers for the protesters had not subpoenaed high officials. Mr. Alterman contended that lawyers could have called officials at any point during the hearing.
Mr. Bloomberg has vigorously defended the arrests and the Police Department. City lawyers have made the point that the police managed to keep order among the thousands of people protesting, even working directly with protest leaders without permits on how and where to march. Above all, they have said, there was no major mishap during the week.
But as the cases moved through the court system, the vast majority were dismissed or otherwise closed by judges and prosecutors. Statistics from the Manhattan district attorney's office show that, as of April 6, 83 percent of the cases had been dismissed, ruled not guilty or adjourned in contemplation of dismissal. About three dozen cases drew felony indictments, the statistics show, though the charges may have later been reduced to misdemeanors.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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