Police Commander Accused of Lying About Arrests
During Republican National Convention
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/nyregion/23arrest.html
A civil liberties group accused the Police Department
yesterday of providing false information used to
prosecute hundreds of people arrested in protest
marches during the 2004 Republican National Convention,
and said that information might have tainted the arrests.
The deposition was taken two weeks ago, on March 7
and March 9, as part of litigation in Federal District
Court in Manhattan filed by scores of demonstrators who
claim that they were subjected to false arrest and
that their civil rights were violated during the convention,
held in August and September 2004.
The inspector's answers are important, civil liberties
lawyers said, because for the arrests to be legal,
the police had to have found that the demonstrators
were blocking traffic, and had to have given them
fair warning to disperse or be arrested. And that is
exactly what the criminal complaints filed by prosecutors
say happened.
In a letter to Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly
and Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney,
Ms. Lieberman called for prosecutors to review the complaints.
Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Morgenthau,
said the complaints would be reviewed.
But Paul J. Browne, deputy police commissioner,
said the arrests were appropriate and that the
civil liberties union was using selective quotations
from Inspector Essig's deposition to suggest that he had lied.
Mr. Brown pointed to other parts of the transcript,
in which Inspector Essig was asked whether he told
the group that it was blocking traffic, and he replied:
"I don't recall specifically what I said.
What I said was 'Stop,' or other words to that effect."
Asked whether he gave an order to disperse, the
inspector said, "I attempted to," before being questioned
further by the civil liberties union's lawyer and
saying he did not.
But Christopher Dunn, the civil liberties group's associate
legal director, said that Inspector Essig, when pressed,
was unambiguous in his testimony. " 'No' is about as
clear as it gets," Mr. Dunn said
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