Over 400 people were wrongly arrested during a protest on Sept. 27, 2002, according to a report released March 11 by a special commission of the D.C. Council.
The report also concluded that that the Metropolitan Police Department then tried to place the blame elsewhere.
When the protesters gathered in Pershing Park to demonstrate against the IMF and World Bank, police surrounded the park and arrested everyone enclosed. Journalists and bystanders, as well as protestors, were arrested.
Police claimed they had disobeyed an order to disperse, but those arrested say no such order was given. The report sided with the protesters, saying police arrested them "without first giving orders or warnings, in violation of MPD policy."
A lawsuit filed by two groups representing those arrested said police held them in handcuffs for several hours, some for more than 24 hours, and many were detained on the floor of a police gymnasium with one of their wrists handcuffed to the opposite ankle.
One of the plaintiffs is an AU student. Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as a local law firm, are acting as counsel for the plaintiffs.
The ACLU said in a press release it believed the true purpose of the arrests "was to disrupt and prevent peaceful political demonstrations scheduled for that weekend."
D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey has said in the past he never conspired against protesters, and that police were just trying to protect the city.
The report also found that the police department's self-investigation of the incident was unfair and biased because of conflicts of interest, such as police officers who were involved in the arrests interviewing the assistant chief of police, and an apparent cover-up to protect Ramsey.
The report speaks harshly of Ramsey, and said "Chief Ramsey is responsible for the arrests at Pershing Park, though he subsequently testified before the Judiciary Committee that he was not a part of that decision."
"I'm not denying some mistakes were made at Pershing Park," Ramsey said in a March 11 article in The Washington Post. "But to ... take it to another level, to make it some kind of mass cover-up is wrong"
