Protesters sue CMPD over 4th Street violence; judge restricts force at Juneteenth march
Protesters sued the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department on Friday over the tactics its officers used June 2 when hundreds of marchers were trapped on 4th Street, then pelted with tear gas, pepper balls and other chemical munitions.
The complaint was filed Friday morning by a group of Charlotte and out-of-state attorneys, who later successfully petitioned a Mecklenburg judge to issue a temporary restraining order restricting police from using similar tactics during Friday night’s scheduled Juneteenth demonstration in uptown.
Superior Court Judge Karen Eady-Williams issued the order after a three-hour emergency hearing at the Mecklenburg County Courthouse.
It bans the use of a controversial police crowd-control maneuver known as “kettling,” while requiring police to make “loud and continuous” dispersal orders before chemical agents are threatened or used.
It further restricts the use of tear gas, pepper balls and other munitions unless police or the public “are faced with an imminent threat of physical harm,” or protesters are committing “threatening acts” that cannot be controlled by taking individual offenders into custody.
Further, the use of munitions against protesters must be approved by Police Chief Kerr Putney, future Chief Johnny Jennings or their designee as “the only reasonable alternative available.”
CMPD and police attorney Mark Newbold did not respond to an Observer email seeking comment about the lawsuit or the restraining order.
In a statement released after the hearing, CMPD said many of the restricted actions outlined in the order already are prohibited under department policy. Initially, police department officials said they interpreted the order as prohibiting officers from “deploying riot control agents in gatherings that involve protesters who are damaging the property of others.”
However on Sunday morning, CMPD officials clarified their statement saying Eady-Williams gave the department written clarification that her order does not prevent the use of chemical agents if protesters are damaging property.
For now, the lawsuit and court order add Charlotte to a growing list of cities reviewing how their police departments use force against the public, particularly minorities.
Charlotte attorney Alex Heroy, who helped argue the case for the CMPD restraining order, said Eady-Williams issued the correct decision.
“This means that tonight, and in the future, protesters can peacefully gather and voice their opinions about police misconduct and abuse without fear of being trapped, gassed, or shot at for expressing their viewpoints,” he said.
“There is a limit to the power of the police.”
Friday’s lawsuit by the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, Charlotte Uprising along with other groups and individual protesters is the first legal action arising from the 4th Street confrontation, which the lawsuit describes as an illegal police ambush of largely peaceful demonstrators protesting the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The protesters accuse police of violating their rights under the state constitution to free speech, free assembly and due process.
The lawsuit also alleges that after promising reforms, CMPD used the same unlawful force on June 2 as it did in 2016, when demonstrations over the police shooting of Keith Scott erupted throughout uptown.
The lawsuit claims protesters need the court’s protection because a similar “misuse of force ... is likely to occur” at the Juneteenth demonstration Friday night.
“Black people have been harmed for centuries under the guise of law enforcement, which uses the term ‘protect and serve,’ but they have never protected or served the black community,” said Corine Mack, Charlotte-Mecklenburg president of the NAACP in a statement released by the ACLU after the judge’s ruling.
“What happened in Charlotte is another example of the abusive and brutal tactics that law enforcement uses against black people somewhere in this country every day.”
The order issued against CMPD appears similar to the one enacted by a federal judge against the city of Seattle. That 14-day order limits police use of chemical agents and other weapons against protesters. Tear gas can be used only as a last resort against “targeted individuals,” and chemical agents cannot be used “indiscriminately” against a crowd.
During the court hearing in Charlotte, Assistant City Attorney Jessica Battle asked Eady-Williams to delay Friday’s hearing over the temporary restraining order against police so the city could properly prepare. She said she received a draft of the lawsuit only minutes before the hearing began.
The judge refused.
Battle later argued that counter to the complaint, police had not trapped the protesters. They had access to an alley next to the BB&T, and at College Street, she said.
She also said that while most of the marchers were peaceful, some were not, and that police had given nine dispersal orders before officers moved in.
Heroy, one of at least eight plaintiffs’ lawyers listed on the lawsuit, told Eady-Williams her ruling could not wait, given the Friday night march and CMPD use of force against past demonstrations.
Heroy also showed a video of the 4th Street incident to the courtroom. He described it as a “horrifying scene.”
This is why a court order is needed, he said. “It’s so graphic that it cannot be allowed to happen. It can’t.”
‘Third World crap’
On the night of June 2, hundreds were trapped between the police lines and the buildings that border the uptown street between Tryon and College. The resulting chaos was captured on multiple videos, and the lawsuit accuses police of using flash grenades, tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper balls against demonstrators.
Marchers said they were forced to flee by crawling under a parking garage security gate. Other demonstrators said they sat down in the street as police officers stationed in buildings above fired down on them.
“That was some Third World crap they pulled. On their own citizens. In Charlotte,” marcher Edward Walker told the Observer a few days later.
“I don’t know if they were tired. I don’t know how many times they have been cussed out ... But what they were doing to us, to a group of protesters who were just walking, they closed us off and they put an onslaught on us.”
As public outcry over videos of the incident rose, the City Council and Putney both called for state and federal investigations of police procedures that night.
“Last night was one of the those times that none of would want to see happen in our city. But it did,” said Mayor Vi Lyles the day after the incident.
“And I hope everyone is aware that that’s not the kind of department we want to have for policing. It’s not the kind of reputation that we want to have nationally or locally.”
Putney initially described the 4th Street marchers as rioters who had left a trail of violence through uptown. He said they had ignored multiple orders to disperse, and that there was “nothing to indicate whatsoever that there was intentional abuse on the part of our officers.”
But the chief later acknowledged errors and said that cops who broke the law or department polices on 4th Street “will be held accountable.”
What happened June 2, Putney said, “were not the tactics we wanted to see.”
Yet the new lawsuit claims it was Putney who oversaw the planning June 2 on how to employ a “premeditated and violent use of force designed to punish those protesting police violence and deter them from future protest.”
While Putney insists marchers were ordered to disperse before they reached 4th Street, the lawsuit says none could be heard on video.
At 9:30 p.m. on June 2, as protesters neared Tryon, a group of officers came running from behind a nearby building, according to the lawsuit, videos and Observer interviews with participants.
The lawsuit says police fired a tear gas canister and a stun grenade to seal off Tryon and send the panicked protesters streaming back toward College Street. There, the lawsuit says, another line of officers hurled three tear-gas canisters.
As protesters searched for escape or fell down in the street, according to the lawsuit, police on Tryon fired five more stun grenades at the crowd.
“Persons marching peacefully to protest police violence were being violently attacked by police without provocation or legal cause,” the lawsuit says.
Marcher Katie Rothweiler told the Observer that with the block sealed off, the panic of the protesters rose.
“We can’t breathe, we can’t see … I was honestly thinking that we were all going to die,” she said. “I had no idea what was going to happen, and they essentially trapped us.”
Tensions around the Friday night march have been heightened by the Thursday arrests of 43 people outside the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office after deputies removed a relief shelter to serve those exiting the jail. The shelter surfaced during weeks of citywide protests around Floyd’s death.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to include a new statement from CMPD two days after the court order was made.
This story was originally published June 19, 2020 at 1:49 PM.
