Detective: Ex-chief Ramsey ordered Pershing Park arrests
By: Scott McCabe
Examiner Staff Writer
November 19, 2009
A veteran D.C. police detective said he heard then-D.C. police chief Charles Ramsey order the mass arrests of 400 protesters at Pershing Park in 2002, contradicting the former chief's testimony that someone else had initiated the roundup, according to an affidavit filed Wednesday in a civil suit in federal court.
In a two-page affidavit signed Monday, 22-year veteran Detective Paul E. Hustler said he was five feet from Ramsey when he heard him say, "we're going to lock them up and teach them a lesson."
The evidence contradicts previous testimony by Ramsey who said under oath that the arrests had been ordered before he had arrived on the scene during the anti-globalization protest in downtown Washington.
A federal judge has called for an investigation into the D.C. police department after officials there destroyed key evidence in a civil suit of the 400 people, including dozens of innocent bystanders and members of the media, who were swept up and hog-tied, bound hand-to-foot.
-- Scott McCabe
