The lawsuit, filed Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union, also includes claims of a protester who was arrested and forced into an unmarked police car, and included a set of disturbing episodes that overshadowed the federal response to the city, where lawyers demonstrate against police brutality have clashed 90 days with legal action.
Christopher David, the veteran, made his first appearance at one of the protests when he saw a group of camouflaged authorities how tear gas was fired at some Protestants and others knocked to the ground, the court said.
After calmly approaching the officers to ask them “what they did and why they did not take their oath to support the constitution,” he was twice pepper sprayed in the face and struck five times with a stick, and broke his hand in two places, according to the lawsuit.
“I swear an oath to defend the Constitution,” David said in a statement Wednesday. “If not selected, the flagrant violations of our civil liberties in Portland will undermine our liberties throughout the country.”
The lawsuit is the first to be filed on behalf of David and other veterans who said authorities used excessive force to deprive them of their protest rights. It also marks the first claim by a protester who was arrested and placed in an unmarked delivery van, Mark Pettibone, who says federal officers are abusing his Fourth Amendment protection against illegal searches and seizures, and is asking a judge for his arrest to strike.
President Donald Trump and acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf are named as suspects along with 200 unnamed federal law enforcement officers. CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.
A spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service, whose officers were involved in the incident with David, said last month that officers had “deployed less than lethal force to arrest individuals who refused to comply with legal orders to stop.” to promote with them. “
Dozens of federal law enforcement officers from the Department of Homeland Security and Marshals Service have also been injured as they set up in and around a complex of federal buildings that are regularly besieged by riots.
While Trump seized the standoffs as part of his campaign to mark the end of violence amid this summer’s massive civil rights movement, the tactics of the federal officers in Portland have also drawn anger and the basis of the demonstrations. reinforce.
Scenes of Protestants such as Pettibone being taken by unknown authorities in unmarked cars have circulated widely online.
In the lawsuit, lawyers write that Pettibone had not committed any crimes when several men in camouflage military clothing jumped out of a dark-colored minivan to apprehend him. He was “firmly led” into the vehicle and drove into a nearby courthouse where federal officers searched his backpack and tried to question him after reading his Miranda rights.
Pettibone was released after being held in a cell for more than an hour, according to the trial.
“I still do not fully agree with what it means that I was abducted by my government,” Pettibone said in a statement. “People need to know what happened to me and the government needs to be held accountable so that what happened to me does not happen to anyone else.”
Legal experts have questioned the officers’ capacities to arrest and interrogate Protestants who are not known to have committed a crime, and the Independent Inspector General of the Homeland Security Department has announced that he is reviewing the arrests.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security officials have defended the use of unmarked cars saying Protestants have targeted police cars and attacked amid the nationwide riots.
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