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  • From: Tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Homestead] Police State vilest Police tactics
  • Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 11:59:10 -0700

Inflicting permanent eye-damage on protesters. Police often need coercive measures, but it sure as hell doesn't include daubing a pepper-salve in anyone's eyes to cause permanent damage, even blindness.




The New York Times
September 22, 2004
Pepper-Spray Case Goes to Jury in California
By CAROLYN MARSHALL

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 21 - Maya Portugal says the majestic redwood trees of Northern California changed her forever. Her love for the sweeping forest canopies and lush old-growth groves has taken her from child explorer to teenage protester to adult plaintiff in a seven-year legal battle between the law enforcement officials of rural Humboldt County and environmentalists opposed to logging the redwoods.

"I grew up in the woods," she said. "Driving through Humboldt now you can see all the clear-cuts. I wanted to do something so my kids wouldn't have to see what I saw."

That is how Ms. Portugal, 22, explained to jurors in federal court here what moved her, at the age of 16, to join protests against logging of the trees. She is one of eight anti-logging activists, known to their colleagues as the Pepper Spray 8, who are the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the City of Eureka and Humboldt County authorities.

The lawsuit, sent to the jury in United States District Court for Northern California on Tuesday, asserts that a county policy that allows the authorities to smear pepper spray ointment on the eyes of protesters constitutes an unnecessary and excessive use of force, tantamount to torture.

The lawsuit stems from three incidents in 1997 when pepper spray was daubed in the eyes of Ms. Portugal and at least seven others after they refused to heed police orders to disperse. Closing arguments in the trial were presented Tuesday. Judge Susan Illston instructed the eight jurors that a unanimous verdict was necessary to find for the protesters, who seek unspecified damages.

"It burned really bad," Ms. Portugal testified last week. "I felt scared. I felt like I was being violated. I felt like the cops were out of control."

The Humboldt authorities testified Monday that pepper spray was considered the safest way to make the arrests. The question of whether the police used unreasonable force in violation of the Fourth Amendment is at the heart of the trial.

The three incidents attracted attention far beyond Humboldt in part because television news programs broadcast the protests, including images of sheriff's deputies daubing the eyes of passive protesters with cotton swabs soaked with pepper spray.

Since then the incidents have been the subject of numerous lawsuits resulting in a jury deadlock, a mistrial, a series of appellate court procedures, the removal of a judge and a United States Supreme Court ruling remanding the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, instructing it to consider whether the sheriffs were immune from suit. The Ninth Circuit said the sheriffs had no immunity and ordered the new trial, now under way.

Lawyers for the protesters include J. Tony Serra, who has characterized the case as "a political trial." Mr. Serra and the others argue that the police acted maliciously, using unreasonable force to intentionally inflict pain, frighten the protesters and silence the anti-logging movement. "When people are nonviolent they do not deserve to be treated like wild beasts," he said in closing.

In testimony last week, protesters told the jury that the chemical caused searing eye pain, gagging, dizziness, hyperventilation and headaches that in some cases lasted days. To this day, protesters said, they fear the police and suffer aftereffects, including impaired vision and recurring growths on their eyelids.

But lawyers for the defendants - Humboldt County, the City of Eureka and local law enforcement officials - argued that the use of pepper spray came in response to "organized lawlessness" by protesters, including the group Earth First, which helped arrange sit-ins and rallies.

The demonstrators were directing their efforts at the Pacific Lumber Company and the Texas investor Charles E. Hurwitz, chief executive of Pacific Lumber's parent company, Maxxam, and their negotiations with the state and federal governments that resulted in the so-called Headwaters deal. It was created to preserve 10,000 acres of redwoods but upset many environmentalists who felt it did not go far enough.

Nancy Delaney, a Eureka lawyer representing the defendants, said, "We believe the use of force was reasonable and the safest way for officers to discharge their lawful duty."

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