Public Comment

The National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area Chapter (NLGSF) calls for the release of approximately 100 people who were arrested this morning in the police raid on Occupy Oakland. The NLGSF has learned that the arrestees are being illegally booked in Alameda County's Glenn Dyer Detention Facility in downtown Oakland and in Santa Rita Jail in Dublin.  

In a letter to Oakland and Alameda County's attorneys (pdf), NLGSF lawyer Rachel Lederman emphasized that the Guild is already suing Oakland and Alameda County over a previous mass arrest one year ago, at a protest over the sentence given Johannes Mehserle. Among other things that ongoing federal civil right class action lawsuit seeks an injunction to stop the Oakland Police from making mass arrests without probable cause to believe that each person has committed a crime; and to stop OPD and the Alameda County Sheriff's Department from incarcerating demonstrators for long periods of time in holding areas under inhumane conditions. The Mehserle demonstrators were held for up to 24 hours in holding cells not only lacking beds, but so crowded that everyone could not even sit down at the same time. The arrests last year did not result in any prosecutions. 

The mass arrests, use of excessive force, and prolonged incarceration today, like those in November, 2010, were contrary to law and policy and the NLGSF demands that the arrestees be released immediately.