A lawsuit filed Monday against the city of Seattle argues protesters’ constitutional rights have been violated by the police department’s “indiscriminate” use of chemical and less-lethal crowd control tactics, which have forced demonstrators to buy “expensive” protective gear in order to safely bring their message against police brutality to the streets.
“Because the Seattle Police Department has acted above and outside the law in dispensing its unbridled force, and the City has failed to prevent same, the government effect is to establish a de facto protest tax,” the lawyers wrote. “Individual protesters subjected to SPD’s unabated and indiscriminate violence now must purchase cost-prohibitive gear to withstand munitions – even when peacefully protesting – as a condition to exercising their right to free speech and peaceable assembly.”
The suit, filed on behalf of five protesters who attended the July 25 protest on Capitol Hill that police later declared a riot, seeks an order from a judge to stop the city from using controversial crowd control tactics on protesters, including blast balls and pepper spray.
read more here: https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/protesters-sue-seattle-claim-they-need-expensive-protective-gear-safely-protest/EY4KISLXCRGETOMIIEVEFQTKCY/
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