8/19—Litigation update
From Talitha
"update/review of status of our lawsuit:
When BLM +ACLU filed suit against city in June, they initially asked for CCW (crowd control weapons, i.e. blast balls, projectile guns, CS spray) to be taken away from SPD (i.e. "enjoin").
The judge didnt go that far, but instead issued a restraining order guiding and limiting use of CCW instead.
On July 25, SPD went, essentially, buck wild - throwing blast balls indiscriminately, using CS gas nonchalantly, and projectile guns without direction at protesters on the street.
What prefigured this conduct? Well, 24 hours earlier, a federal judge had halted the implementation of a recently passed city ordinance - an ordinance vehemently opposed by SPD, SPOG, the Chief of Police, and the Mayor - that prohibited use or possession of CCW.
SPD was watching this decision closely - its union president Mike Solan tweeted out the motion seeking the federal court to halt the implementation of this ordinance.
After the ordinance was halted, the next day SPD used these crowd control weapons indiscriminately, and, seemingly, from folks on ground, with a vengeance.
We asked for judge to find that after July 25, any discretion to use these CCW is incompatible w constitutional rights b/c SPD can't follow a clear federal order directing judicious and limited use of these CCW, and where their inability to do so burdens protesters' exercise of 1st Amendment b/c to return to streets, while these CCW are still in SPD hands, they have to gear up to be safe.
The court denied our motion, finding that we hadn't shown anything "new" or different that differentiated our plaintiffs' request from that which was requested in June by BLM.
We moved the court to reconsider its decision.
Because in BLM, they didn't talk about gear-b/c-SPD-cant-follow-a-federal-order-chills-exercise-of-1st-amendment. Moreover, that our plaintiffs' claims were made *after* this show of force on July 25 *while a TRO (temporary restraining order) was operative* showed the need for further relief, as opposed to BLM, who approached the court with SPD's conduct pre-TRO. Simply stated, the egregious and flagrant violation of the court's order showed discretion shouldn't afforded; that removing CCW was necessary.
The court denied that motion to reconsider yesterday."
