By Danny Wicentowski
Officers arresting protesters
the night of August 18. Nineteen people were charged with failing to disperse
that day.
The American Civil Liberties
Union of Missouri argued to a federal judge Monday that St. Louis County and
Missouri State Highway Patrol are enforcing an unconstitutional "five
second rule" that allows cops to arrest protesters at will.
Known as either the "five
second rule" or "keep moving rule," the controversial police
tactic was sprung on protesters August 18, nine days after Ferguson cop Darren
Wilson shot and killed eighteen-year-old Michael Brown. Police threatened
protesters with arrest if they stopped moving, forcing crowds into grueling
marches to avoid violating the ill-defined rule.
According to the witnesses
brought by the ACLU, police used the tactic arbitrarily, harassing some
protesters and letting others go. St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar
admitted yesterday the rule even confused officers, who misinterpreted his
orders and used the "five second rule" to arrest protesters during
the peaceful daytime hours.
See also: Ferguson Arrests:
Everyone St. Louis County Police Locked Up During 12 Days of Crisis
"There were pass-ons that
confused the officers," said Belmar, who told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
he intended the rule be enforced only at night, when the perceived threat of
looting and violence was at its highest.
"I don't think we were
clear enough as commanders ... to tell (officers) if there's a different
dynamic -- there's not a problem -- don't worry about it," he said.
However, the rule gave law
enforcement so much free reign that it violated the due process of the
protesters, claims ACLU attorneys.
On August 18 and 19, the first
two days when the "five second rule" went into effect, police
arrested 65 people for failing to disperse. At the hearing yesterday, Belmar
said the Missouri State High Patrol specifically used the misdemeanor charge as
a catch-all tool for enforcing Governor Jay Nixon's state of emergency
declaration and accompanying curfew; Belmar also said police wielded the rule
as a preventative measure against crowds gathering in a single spot and causing
trouble.
Protesters did not take the
"five second rule" well.
"They just provoke people
with all this," Jacquelyn Hall told Daily RFT on August 18. "They
make people angrier because it's trying to tell them they don't have control
over where they live, even though this is their home."
See also: After Forcing
Ferguson Protesters to March in Confined Protest Area, Tear Gas Again
The next day, August 19, Daily
RFT reported that officers rushed into a crowd of protesters and media,
arresting people seemingly at random.
"The protesters are peaceful
out here, and all the cops are doing is denying us our constitutional
rights," said protester Markis Thompson at the time.
The ACLU agreed. The
organization filed a temporary restraining order against the "five second
rule," but it was defeated by Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster, who
argued the rule was "narrowly tailored" to address the violence on
West Florrisant Avenue.
That claim, though, is hotly
contested by the ACLU and multiple protesters.
"The unbounded nature of
the rule has led citizens to be threatened with arrest for
activities that ordinarily
would not even border on the unlawful," argued the ACLU in an court
filing, which includes extensive testimony from protesters and legal
obeservers. ACLU employee Mustafa Abdullah testified he was threatened with
arrest for trying to pray and for walking with a reporter.
"I had been threatened
with arrest five times in an hour," he said.