Manhattan DA Drops Charges Against 21 Occupy Wall Street Protesters: Gothamist

Manhattan DA Drops Charges Against 21 Occupy Wall Street Protesters

(AP/Stephanie Keith)

The NYPD has arrested almost 2,000 protesters since the Occupy Wall Street movement began, and some of those arrested have refused to go the usual route taken by demonstrators. Typically, someone arrested for disorderly conduct at a protest will agree to an ACD (Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal), which means that the charges are dropped after six months if the individual stays out of trouble (or whatever our police state considers "trouble" these days). But some of those arrested are refusing the routine plea deal and are demanding a trial, because they insist the charges are bogus. And yesterday, prosecutors decided to back down and drop the charges against 21 of them.

Attorney Gideon Orion Oliver, who serves as President of the National Lawyers Guild - New York City Chapter and is personally representing over 100 protesters, tells us, "Essentially, what this means is that the DA interviewed the arresting officer and if that officer couldn't say anything about that individual's conduct, they decided to dismiss the case. On the one hand, that's good the DA is dismissing these cases. On the other hand, there are many more I hope will be dismissed. But this isn't something I've seen happen in mass arrest cases before. After the 2004 RNC, the DA dismissed over 200 cases en masse, but that was an exception, and most of those were arrests were made during a single incident, the War Resisters League march."

The majority of the protesters who appeared in court on Monday were arrested at a September 24th demonstration at Union Square, just eight days into the Occupy movement. A source tells the Wall Street Journal that about half of all the OWS cases that have been arraigned have been "resolved," and about 50 other cases are headed to trial, the Times reports. Prosecutors want to consolidate the remaining cases into groups of approximately 10 in order to speed the process. "This is Cy Vance's first foray into the protest prosecution arena," says Oliver. "I think it remains to be seen how his office's treatment of protesters will differ from his predecessor."

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By John Del Signore in News on January 10, 2012 11:21 AM

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