Charges dropped against all 57 pro-Palestinian demonstrators arrested on UT campus
Charges dropped against all 57 pro-Palestinian demonstrators arrested on UT campus
The county attorney said there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute the people arrested during Wednesday's protest.
Hell yeah, Austin. Hell yeah, Garza.
There should be some kind of punishment for knowingly arresting people you can't charge with a crime. This has happened at numerous protests for years, dozens of people arrested, released without a single charge.
Isn't false imprisonment or abduction a crime? The police use this as a disruption tactic, they don't care about the likelihood of actual charges.
I agree that such arrests are just a fear-inducing (i.e. "state terror") tactic. It sounds like the final decision to pursue/not-pursue charges was up to a judge, at least in this case. It would be interesting to know if the cops knew or cared about what (and what quality) evidence they had or didn't have.
Police arrested 57 people for criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor akin to loitering. Travis County Attorney Delia Garza's office said Friday all those charges have been dismissed after a county judge found insufficient evidence to proceed.
Agreed, even if compensation was something like “minimum wage for the entire time you are wrongly incarcerated” that would be a good place to start.
True that. There have been successful lawsuits for obstruction of first amendment rights for similar actions but I'm sure most people wouldn't go through the trouble of that, or have the means to.
I could be misremembering the details, but I read about a case of a cop wrongfully arresting a Black Panther member in the 60s or 70s, his friend shot the cop, and his charges were dropped because it was determined to be self-defense. I think the cop was plain-clothes which would have made a difference I'm sure, but I can't imagine that happening today in any US court.
I have noticed when I've seen protests with armed groups involved, even just a handful of John Brown Gun Club members for example, the police are much less willing to mass arrest or escalate, for obvious reason. Though I think the student protests in this instance are going for optics of peace and non-violence so they probably don't want that.
Police arrested 57 people for criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor akin to loitering. Travis County Attorney Delia Garza's office said Friday all those charges have been dismissed after a county judge found insufficient evidence to proceed.
Isn't it cool that the pigs arrested them anyway? Maybe they should be hunting for truffles instead of trumping up charges against innocent people.
thank christ by name that we still have habeas corpus
Of course they were dropped. They were arrested illegally.
I mean good for them but wasn't that what's gonna happen anyway?