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Occupy Wall Street protesters win legal victory in Brooklyn bridge arrests
Ruling clears the way for a class-action lawsuit by the roughly 700 protesters arrested on the bridge in October
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Ryan Devereaux in New York
guardian.co.uk, Friday 8 June 2012 16.54 EDT
Occupy protesters on Brooklyn bridge
Protesters on the Brooklyn bridge in October. A federal judge ruled protesters weren't sufficiently warned not to march over the bridge. Photograph: Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters
A federal judge has ruled that the NYPD failed to sufficiently warn Occupy Wall Street protesters against walking on the roadway of the Brooklyn bridge in October, resulting in the arrest of roughly 700 people.
After reviewing video footage from both parties, judge Jed S Rakoff of the federal district court in Manhattan sided with the protesters.
The arrests marked one of the most famous moments of the early stages of the Occupy protests, drawing international headlines and more participants to the movement.
Protesters alleged that police had led them onto the roadway, while police maintained that the demonstrators were sufficiently informed that walking on the area intended for vehicles would result in detention.
"A reasonable officer in the noisy environment defendants occupied would have known that a single bull horn could not reasonably communicate a message to 700 demonstrators," Rakoff wrote in his decision. Rakoff added that protesters "might infer permission to enter the vehicular roadway from the fact that officers, without offering further warnings, proceeded ahead of and alongside plaintiffs onto that roadway".
Protesters were offered "an implicit invitation to follow," the judge wrote.
The decision clears the way for a class-action lawsuit accusing police officers and officials involved in the arrests of violating the protesters' constitutional rights by leading them into a trap. The lawsuit calls for all arrest records stemming from the incident to be cleared, an injunction to end the police practice of trapping and detaining demonstrators, and damages to be awarded to those who were arrested.
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