Jamie Hilao

So much for the amendments to the Patriot Act. Now they’re going after vegan peaceful protestors.

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The lawsuit stems from an incident on December 20, 2003, when Caitlin Childs and Christopher Freeman were participating in a peaceful animal cruelty protest on public property outside a Honey Baked Ham store on Buford Highway in DeKalb County. After the protest, Childs and Freeman noticed that they were being observed and photographed by a man in an unmarked car. They approached the car and wrote down the make, model, color and license plate number on a piece of paper. After leaving the protest site, they noticed the unmarked car was following them so they pulled over into a parking lot.

According to the lawsuit, both a uniformed police officer and the man in the unmarked car, who was later identified as Detective D.A. Gorman of the Homeland Security Division, pulled in behind Childs and Freeman and ordered them to exit their car. Detective Gorman then demanded that Childs turn over the piece of paper on which she had copied his license tag number. Childs refused to hand the paper over to him, and was handcuffed and searched by a male officer, despite her request to be searched only by a female officer. Both Childs and Freeman were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, and police confiscated the piece of paper and Childs’ house keys. Both individuals were released from custody, but neither the piece of paper nor the keys were returned to Childs.

“Our clients knew their rights. When they saw someone in an unmarked car snapping their pictures and taking down information, they had every right to find out whether the government was spying and collecting information on them,” said Gerry Weber, Legal Director of the ACLU of Georgia, and a lead attorney in the case.
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Full Article:
American Civil Liberties Union : Homeland Security Officials Wrongly Arrested Peaceful Protesters in Georgia, Charges ACLU

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 31st, 2006 at 7:57 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.