Black Lives Matter files a lawsuit against the Santa Monica Police Department over last summer’s riot

Privacy and freedom of expression are attacked. Get your internet freedom back with you
Surf shark.

A group from Black Lives Matter is suing the Santa Monica Police Department for handling the riot that took place in the area at the height of the George Floyd demonstrations last summer.

The Los Angeles Times reported on Monday the filing of the lawsuit filed by the Los Angeles division of Black Lives Matter. These allegations against the Santa Monica Police Department are like the class action lawsuit that BLM-LA filed against the LAPD.

You are seeking equal class action status in the Santa Monica matter.

To support their claims, BLM-LA held accounts of several protesters. David Brown reportedly arrested in the street, beaten with batons and jailed for violating the curfew. Brown was driven to Los Angeles and instructed not to re-enter Santa Monica.

But he actually lived there. He wasn’t from outside. This application of curfews by the local authorities is one of the objections raised in court.

Former Santa Monica Police Chief Cynthia Renaud is named and on record, as she previously said, that the police department was equipped to deal with “protests and rioting” but “organized criminals” were a new element in the game of chaos the cops were “unprepared” for.

Almost all of the stores on 4th Street in Santa Monica were looted: REI, jewelry stores, Jamba Juice. Some cops, but it’s completely free for everyone. People who walk and run by taking arms full of clothes pic.twitter.com/iLt4eY9dVX

– Brianna Sacks (@bri_sacks) May 31, 2020

The LA Times remembers what that meant for the city in terms of the damage caused by the riots:

“In Santa Monica, where the riots mostly took place on May 31st, many boutiques and stores were broken into. The city counted 178 incidents of” looting “of non-residential buildings, 49 incidents of vandalism, 10 attacks on officials, 18 damaged police cars, 12 arson attacks, 17 serious assaults and nine break-ins in connection with the unrest that day, including crimes. “

The lawsuit alleges that constitutional rights were violated when it preventively banned “peaceful gatherings, the containment of protesters, the use of unlawful violence, arrests and hours of detention on buses with no access to toilets, water or food”.

BLM-LA’s legal representative in this case is Carol Sobel, a Santa Monica-based activist who served as an attorney for the ACLU in Southern California for two decades. Sobel is also leading the LAPD lawsuit.