Second Amended Complaint - Section 5

Second Amended Complaint - Section 5

VIOLATIONS OF CLEARLY ESTABLISHED LAW

171. The actions of the above-referenced defendants violated the following clearly established and well settled federal constitutional rights:

a. Freedom from the unreasonable seizure of one’s person;
b. Freedom from government disruption of, interference with, or retaliation for,
engagement in free speech, assembly and association activities;
c. Freedom from deprivation of liberty absent, or in violation of, Due Process of law.

172. Clearly established constitutional law was violated in this case where police permitted the
march to occur and failed to issue fair notice (audible or understandable to the group that was
subject to arrest) that permission had been revoked before the police engaged in arrests of the
plaintiff class.

173. Clearly established law was violated where police permitted the march (and actually led
the march) to be present upon an ordinarily prohibited area and then, just minutes later,
arrested the marchers for having marched without permission or for being in an ordinarily
prohibited area.

174. Even assuming arguendo that the bullhorn warning at the base of the bridge could
possibly have been heard by some set of persons, and further assuming arguendo that the
subsequent police permission to use the roadway was not superceding, clearly established
law was violated for the defendants to have imputed alleged culpability to the hundreds of
others who were marching in the same march and who were not a part of, nor privy to, that
interaction.

175. Clearly established law was violated where the plaintiff class of 700+ persons was
arrested in the absence of an objectively reasonable probable cause determination
particularized to the plaintiff class in its entirety or to each and every one of the individual
class members.

176. Clearly established law was violated where prior to the initiation of the arrest of the
plaintiff class, fair notice was not issued including orders to comply or disperse issued in a
manner reasonably likely to have reach all of the crowd despite any noise the demonstrators
may have been making.

177. Clearly established law was violated in that the plaintiff class was arrested without fair
notice to the group as a whole, followed by time and opportunity to comply and a refusal to
quit.

178. NYPD Command Staff, identified and unidentified, participated in, caused, approved or
ratified the arrest of the plaintiff class. This included through issuing or approving or
ratifying the order to arrest the class. Additionally, individual supervisory officers had the
duty to exercise appropriate command authority in their supervision of their subordinates and
failed to do so, resulting in the unconstitutional deprivations complained of herein. Individual
officers had the duty to intervene to prevent or halt unlawful and/or unconstitutional conduct
complained of herein, including the mass false arrest of the class.

179. No objectively reasonable officer or official could have participated or caused or
approved or ratified the arrest of the plaintiff class with knowledge of these circumstances
constituting violations of clearly established law.
 

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