POLITICO They Just Launched a War’
Protesters took to the streets last summer to protest police violence. Lawsuits making headway in Columbus and other cities are showing that the police crackdown helped prove their point.
By J. LESTER FEDER
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J. Lester Feder is a freelance journalist and 2020-2021 Knight-Wallace Reporting Fellow at the University of Michigan.
Tammy Fournier-Alsaada was addressing a crowd in front of Ohio’s domed Capitol building one day last spring when someone whispered in her ear: Police were arresting protesters.
Fournier-Alsaada, 59, knew a thing or two about protests. She was an organizer with the People’s Justice Project, which had been fighting police abuse in Columbus since 2015. Fournier-Alsaada also knew the police. She had sat across the table from top officers as a member of a mayor-appointed commission on public safety reform.
The preliminary injunction bars officers from using tear gas, pepper spray and wooden pellets against nonviolent protesters.
Sasha Tutstone and her son Jaelyn Berry, 9, stand with signs reading “Justice for Andre Hill #blacklivesmatter” and “Cops Stop Killing Black People Our Skin is Not a Crime” in front of Columbus Division of Police Headquarters, Dec. 23, 2020 in downtown Columbus, Ohio. (Brooke LaValley/The Columbus Dispatch via AP)
COLUMBUS, Ohio (CN) A federal judge has ordered Columbus police to approach interactions with peaceful protesters differently in the wake of their use of force during demonstrations last summer.
Chief Judge for the Southern District of Ohio Algenon Marbley, issued his 88-page ruling on Friday, and his injunction prevents Columbus police from using “non-lethal” force against nonviolent protesters if they are verbally confronting police officers.
More than two dozen plaintiffs who say they were brutalized by Columbus police during protests against racial injustice last year have asked a federal judge to order immediate changes to officers’ use of pepper spray, wooden bullets and other so-called non-lethal weapons on nonviolent protesters.
Chief U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley is nearing a decision on the preliminary injunction, with responses form both sides filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio in Columbus.
“The primary goal of everybody involved lawyers and the individuals whose names are in the case is to prevent this from happening again,” said Frederick M. Gittes, one of the attorneys representing the protesters.