A group of antifa thugs are suing the Seattle police department for self defense. The lawsuit focuses on July 25th. That is the night that protesters injured 59 police officers. The lawsuit claims that by using defensive non lethal weapons, the Seattle police made it impossible for the poor, who can’t afford body armor and gas masks could not protest.
That is just wrong. You don’t need body armor and gas masks to protest, you need them to riot. I don’t remember reading in the constitution where people have the God given right to riot. Five protesters, Jessica Benton, Shelby Bryant, Anne Marie Cavanaugh, Alyssa Garrison, and Clare Thomas had the chutzpah to sue because the police actually defended themselves against those who were rioting.
They claim their rights contained within the first, fourth and fourteenth amendments were violated. The claim under the 14th Amendment is the most odious. That is the amendment that guarantees equal treatment under the law. On a night when 59 officers of the law suffered injuries, the rioters are suing. What a disgrace.
The plaintiffs allege:
“Only those who have the means to purchase extensive protective gear can engage in 1st Amendment speech in the streets of Seattle, where its police force is not a source of protection but of antagonism for protesters.”
The rioters claim it is a protest tax because when the police force is forced to initiate defensive measures against those who riot and destroy in the streets cannot equally protect themselves against such things as pepper spray and rubber bullets. They claim that some people without money have no protection against the consequences of their own actions.
“Because the Seattle Police Department has acted above and outside the law in dispensing its unbridled force, and the City has failed to prevent same, the government effect is to establish a de facto protest tax: individual protesters subjected to SPD’s unabated and indiscriminate violence now must purchase cost-prohibitive gear to withstand munitions – even when peacefully protesting – as a condition to exercising their right to free speech and peaceable assembly,” the plaintiffs allege.
The lawsuit claims that “the continued misuse of war munitions by SPD against civilians turns the streets – a public forum and site of protest – into a pay-to-protest racket where only a privileged few who are wealthy enough or popular enough to crowdsource funds to purchase gear akin to that used by the police department they fund can truly be in the streets.”