Pepper Spray By Q-tip Trial Opens Second Week With Police Video Tapes

For immediate
release
Sept. 14, 2004
Contact: Karen Pickett, 510-548-3113

Pepper Spray By Q-tip Trial Opens Second Week With Police Video Tapes
Young Activist Plaintiffs On Stand To Testify This Week

Beta cam video news releases and courtroom drawings are available
through the contact phone number. Video images, legal documents,
other background and links available at http://www.nopepperspray.org.

San Francisco, Calif.-The pepper spray by Q-tip trial to determine
whether activists' Fourth Amendment rights were violated when law
enforcement inserted Q-tips soaked in liquid pepper spray directly
into their eyes continues before a jury of four men and four women in
SF Federal court.

After jury selection on Sept. 8, the court heard opening arguments
last Thursday by renowned civil rights attorney Dennis Cunningham,
lead attorney for the eight plaintiffs, and then from Nancy Delaney,
attorney for the County of Humboldt, City of Eureka and two named
Humboldt County Sheriff Dept. (HCSD) defendants. Witnesses on the
stand Thursday included Sheriff's Sergeant Pete Ciarabellini, head of
the Special Response Team, aka the Earth First! Response Team, and
Pacific Lumber Co.'s head of security Carl Anderson, who admitted to
shooting marbles at tree-sitting activists with a high-powered
slingshot.

Anderson, whose animus for forest protection activists is well-known,
was grilled by flamboyant plaintiffs' attorney Tony Serra, who
brought out the fact that Pacific Lumber and Anderson had been urging
law enforcement to take stronger action against protesters in the
long-standing campaign to preserve old growth redwood forest on
California's north coast. This escalated response to civil
disobedience actions manifested in the use of pepper spray, applied
via Q-tip and sprayed at close range into the faces of the plaintiff
activists.

On Monday, Sept. 13, the jury saw this in two police video tapes
showing the police response to two sit-in actions in the fall of
1997-one in the office of then-Congressman Frank Riggs, and one in
the forest in the Bear Creek watershed. The police, who are being
sued in this legal action for use of excessive force, are shown using
the unprecedented direct application of the caustic chemical in order
to coerce the activists to unlock from their lock-down devices.

The next witnesses on the stand are expected to be:
… Humboldt County Deputy Sheriff Marvin Kirkpatrick, part of the
"Special Response Team" set up by the Sheriffs' Department in the
fall of 1997 to deal with demonstrations. He personally applied the
pepper spray via Q-tip and direct spray in all three incidents.
… Humboldt County Deputy Sheriff Held, part of the special services
division, who had responded to scores of lock-down protests using
other methods common before pepper spray was used.
… Chief of Eureka Police Arnold Millsap who will discuss Eureka's use
of force policy and the incident in Congressman Riggs' office.
… All eight plaintiffs will testify, beginning with Spring Lundberg,
who was 17 years old at the time of the pepper spray incidents.
Plaintiffs are expected to take the stand starting late Tuesday
afternoon or first thing Wednesday Sept. 15. Court is in session
8:30 a.m.to 3:30 p.m. Monday to Thursday before Judge Susan Illston,
in Courtroom 10, 19th floor of the Federal Building at 450 Golden
Gate Ave., San Francisco.
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