Civil Rights organizations and personal protesters have filed a joint lawsuit against United States President Donald Trump and the country’s attorney general William Barr for ordering a “coordinated and unprovoked police charge through” to disperse earlier in the week hundreds of protesters gathered outside the White House.
The incident took place last Monday afternoon in Lafayette Square, in front of the headquarters of the US Presidency, where hundreds of people had moved their protest against police brutality after the death on May 25 in police custody of the citizen of race black George Floyd, for which four agents have been charged.
At around 6.30 pm local time, Trump decided to leave the White House to pay his respects at the nearby San Juan Episcopal Church, at which point the police, according to the lawsuit, “carried out a coordinated and unprovoked charge through against the crowd of protesters, “during which he resorted to” chemical irritants, rubber bullets, and sound cannons to disperse the crowd “to protect the president.
The lawsuit, filed among others by the Black Lives Matters DC organization and the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia, specifically accuses Trump, Barr and other federal security officials of “violating the constitutional rights of protesters and participating in a illegal conspiracy to violate your rights. “
“The president’s shameless, unconstitutional, unprovoked, and downright criminal attack on protesters for disagreeing with his views shakes the foundations of our nation’s constitutional order,” said ACLU D.C. legal director Scott Michelman.
“When the main law enforcement agencies,” he added, “become complicit in an autocrat’s tactics, they freeze all speech protection in this country.”
“The assault on Lafayette Square,” added the president and executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, Kristen Clarke, “amounts to unconstitutional and illegal state-sponsored violence against non-violent civil rights activists.”
“The actions of the Government were intended to cool the speech and the right of assembly of people who exercised their rights protected under the Constitution, and this lawsuit is intended to defend the rights that are at the heart of our democracy,” has added.
In addition, the complainant organizations are preparing an additional document in response to the dozens of attacks by the Police and other security forces against journalists and legal observers that covered the protests.
© 2020 Europa Press.
