The Assault on Free Speech, Public Assembly, and Dissent

A National Lawyers Guild Report 25
• find a housing violation as the pretext to close down the
premises.
<strong>The</strong> Supreme Court has held that administrative searches such as fire
and building inspections may not be used a pretext for a criminal
investigation. 48 Human Rights Watch sent a letter of concern to
Washington, D.C. police chief Charles Ramsey in April 2000
questioning, among other matters, the necessity of closing protesters’
“convergence center” under the guise of its being a fire hazard, and
asking what the exact nature of the fire-code violation was and
whether the property owners had previously been cited for
preexisting code violations. 49
On April 15, 2000, Fire and Emergency Medical Services officials
and police in Washington, D.C. raided a “convergence center” on
Florida Avenue NW. <strong>The</strong> stated reason was fire-code violations,
although the action was later found to violate prohibitions on
infringement of free speech: “<strong>The</strong> agencies effectively closed down
the convergence center not primarily for public safety reasons, but
for other reasons that presumably include disrupting the planned
demonstrations and securing, for law enforcement purposes,
information on those participating in the demonstrations.” 50 Police
seized puppets and literature for the next day’s World Bank protests
in what the New York Times described as “a preemptive show of
force.” 51
Attorneys from the National Lawyers Guild and the Partnership for
Civil Justice secured a signed emergency agreement at 2 a.m. in
federal district court with city attorneys to reopen the convergence
center. Police breached the agreement, however, and kept the center
locked until the protests were over. Later the lawyers obtained
production notes for a video to train D.C. police on how to handle
protesters that suggested showing “footage when Intel shut down the
convergence center.” <strong>The</strong> reference to the police intelligence unit
(Intel) was evidence that the raid was in fact about disrupting protest,
not addressing fire-code violations. <strong>The</strong> same notes refer to such
training topics as “locking up the troublemakers on the first night,”
“sleep deprivation tactics,” and “going in when you spot a section of
‘All Black.’ ” <strong>The</strong> D.C. City Council Committee on the Judiciary’s
report on the investigation of the MPD indicated that documents
obtained by the committee supported the notion that the raid was a
police operation intended to interrupt demonstrators’ activities. <strong>The</strong>