This includes police officers. Specifically, the use of pepper spay
by law enforcement against non-violent protestors has been found to be a
violation of of the 4th amendment rights of the protesters in the case
of Lundberg v. Humboldt,
which is the controlling precedent in the 9th Circuit, which has
jurisdiction over any cases brought against the police for their actions
in Seattle and Oakland.
In its 2001 opinion regarding the Lundberg case, the 9th Circuit
held that non-violent protestors who did not present a threat to the
safety of the public or to law enforcement officials, even though they
had committed the misdemeanor offense of trespass, could sue the
governmental authorities and law enforcement officials who had pepper
sprayed them, reversing the trial court's decision to dismiss the case
on the basis that the authorities had "limited immunity" to violate the
civil rights of individuals engaged in non-violent civil disobedience.
The incidents that led to this decision occurred in 1997 and involved
protests by environmental activists in which they occupied a logging
company engaged in cutting down redwood trees in Northern California.
Several of the activists had use metal locking devices known as "black
bears" to link themselves to one another thus making the local sheriffs
employ a tool known as a "grinder" to cut them apart in order to arrest
the activists. Apparently, the Sheriff' Department s felt this was a
lot of bother so they asked the county's risk manager and district
attorney to determine if they could use pepper spray instead to force
the activists to release themselves. The County;s risk manager and the
district attorney were only too happy to oblige:
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