Good for Liza - she is doing "god's work"! It is clear that these practices are not a local issue...it seems that each year law enforcement throughout the U.S. has been pushing the constitutional envelope with tactics that attempt to "preempt" and curtail peaceful dissent during these big (and small) protests. And the mayors and police chiefs concerned frequently publicly cite police practices at the previous big protest as "lessons" and precedents that they are drawing upon.
BTW, along with the ACLU lawsuits, the NYC-RNC protests have also led to a number of successful lawsuits from NLG and independent attorneys. And more are underway. I am told that, when the day is done, the list of successful legal challenges and the total bill for civil actions may be quite high in NYC. So hopefully, drawing on the progressive legal capacities present in NYC, new process is underway that will begin to reverse past trends.
>.... Obviously, it's annoying when protesters over-
>dramatize their victimization by police, deliberately provoke cops,
>or claim that we live in a "police state." (We don't.)
Is there some reason I don't know about for this sentence? AFAIK, not even the NY police (nor even Fox News!) have raised a charge/defense of "deliberate provocation". Not one single time. A striking hallmark of the RNC protests was that these were VERY disciplined, "mature" protesters. Likewise, AFAIK, none of the lawyers, nor protest spokespersons have ever been quoted as saying we live in "police state". These are very serious plaintiffs. The City's lawyers DID claim that the protesters "overdramatized" their victimization by police -- so far, in every major case the judges have ruled that to be an outright lie.
As the list knows from my posts during the RNC I was in close contact with a large number of the on-scene legal observers at that time and I have seen several of the videos to be released. Is Liza on to something I have missed?
Paul