Group items tagged

He said under a U.S. Supreme Court case, Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. DoyleMt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle, the NYPD has to show that it would have executed these bench warrants even if these particular individuals were not involved in Occupy Wall Street protests.   In other words, said Eisenstein, the police could be violating the First Amendment if they arrest someone on a bench warrant solely because they want to question him about his political organizing.

The half-dozen or so stories  fit a pattern: each individual was approached and questioned by officers who said they were picking up people on arrest warrants for low-level, non-criminal violations, such as public urination, walking around with an open container of alcohol or biking on a sidewalk. These warrants can stay open for years.

Court officials say there are more than 1 million bench warrants currently open for these types of violations in New York City.  But this week, squads of police officers decided to act on a few of them.