Lawyers: Radio traffic shows police herded marchers into a waiting ambush at Fourth Street
Radio traffic from the night of June 2 appears to show that police intentionally funneled marchers into a trap on Fourth Street where the most violent confrontation of Charlotte’s protests over police brutality took place.
Hundreds of protesters were caught between two lines of police at Tryon and College streets, then hit with a barrage of chemical munitions while officers stationed on the second floor of an adjoining parking garage fired pepper balls from above.
“They had no idea what they were walking into,” Charlotte attorney Lauren Newton told a Mecklenburg judge on Thursday. “But CMPD did.”
Newton’s comments came during a four-hour hearing in which attorneys for a group of marchers and others asked Superior Court Judge George Bell to extend an order restricting CMPD’s use of chemical munitions and other tactics against future protests.
Police attorney Jessica Battle said any extension of the order would be an improper court intrusion over the day-to-day operations of CMPD. She also defended the department’s conduct on June 2, saying police “acted reasonably” in response to an unlawful assembly that at times turned hostile.
Bell, a first-term judge, said he would rule within the next two weeks.
CMPD radio traffic from June 2, which was played for the first time in open court, shows that police had a coordinated plan to control the marchers’ path through uptown, blocking off streets and funneling the protest onto Fourth Street — and toward a group of police hiding at Tryon while other officers waited on the second floor of the garage. Both were armed with chemical munitions — known as riot control agents, or RCAs.
“Let’s do the thing that we talked about earlier,” one officer said not long before the 9:30 p.m. confrontation, according to the audio played in court. “Yeah, hold the hard line. Let’s turn them up Trade and get this plan in action. Everybody else get in line to push them up to Trade and College.”
Once the Fourth Street marchers began crossing College, police commanders counted down the seconds before two lines of officers sprung into action and jointly sealed off the block. They then began firing stun grenades, tear gas and pepper balls as the marchers fled or huddled in the street, a chaotic scene caught on numerous cell phone videos.
No kettling
The restraining order, which was handed down June 19 by another judge, has banned CMPD use of a controversial police crowd-control maneuver known as “kettling,” in which lines of police push in against protesters and force them in a certain direction. The order also requires police to make “loud and continuous” dispersal orders before chemical agents are threatened or used.
Tear gas, pepper balls and other munitions cannot be used 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 arresting individual offenders.
The order is tied to a lawsuit filed by the NAACP, other groups and individual protesters that accuses police of an excessive and unconstitutional use of force on Fourth Street.
In Friday’s hearing, their attorneys asked Bell to extend the restraining order until the lawsuit is decided.
In lengthy back-and-forths before Bell, both sides volleyed starkly different depictions of the June 2 events. What the lawsuit attorneys described as a peaceful demonstration to protest the police killing in Minneapolis of George Floyd, Battle said qualified as a riot under state law.
The marchers’ attorney said police tactics that night violated the U.S. and North Carolina constitutions.
“This was a plan put in place by CMPD well before 9:30 p.m. They drove a group of protesters through Charlotte exactly where they wanted them to go,” said Alex Heroy, a Charlotte attorney who also spoke on behalf of the lawsuit and restraining order.
“It wasn’t happenstance that there were officers waiting on the second floor of the parking deck ... That’s inhumane. Somebody greenlighted this in advance. They don’t get it. They haven’t learned that this is way over the line.”
Battle, however, told the judge that members of the crowd had been violent at times earlier in the night. Video played in the courtroom showed three water bottles being thrown at a line of officers at one uptown intersection. Another officer was hit in the head by a rock while radio traffic said police had been assaulted with a caustic liquid. In another incident, police reported that several officers had been targeted by a marcher with a laser pointer.
Battle said the demonstrators had been given multiple orders to disperse, and that an “unbiased” review of the Fourth Street confrontation by the State Bureau of Investigation found that the marchers had been given escape routes, not funneled into a police ambush, as the lawsuit claims.
The protesters’ attorneys countered that there is no evidence that police faced an “imminent threat of harm” that night, which is required by CMPD policy before they can use RCAs.
“So we have a bunch of people walking without a permit,” Heroy asked sarcastically. “So we can gas, shoot and trap them? That’s not constitutionally allowed.”
Co-counsel Luke Largess attempted to use Battle’s arguments against her to persuade the judge to extend the order.
“There is a need for the court to keep CMPD from the conduct that they are here today defending,” the Charlotte attorney said.
“And they remain defiant at what they did that night.”
This story was originally published July 10, 2020 at 4:19 PM.
