But the current approach that D.C. police take toward protests did not come about on its own. Instead, the more relaxed attitude is the result of investigations and litigation that came about after the Metropolitan Police Department employed a heavy-handed approach to various protests in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Here's something you don't see every day: D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department has asked the FBI to investigate it.

After eight years of litigation on behalf of the nearly 400 people who were arrested illegally in September 2002, the Pershing Park mass arrest case has entered a new phase as 15 key police officials and lawyers, including former D.