The Graham Police Department’s and Alamance County Sheriff Office’s recent breakup of a demonstration and march to the polls with pepper spray has landed them in federal court.
The lawsuit alleges that Graham police and the sheriff's deputies deliberately and premeditatedly attacked peaceful protesters, including children, the elderly and disabled, with pepper spray Saturday, Oct. 31.
“Defendants and their deputies and officers planned and orchestrated the violent dispersal of a peaceful and nonpartisan march to a polling place in Graham,” according to the suit.
The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and ACLU of North Carolina filed a federal suit late Monday on behalf of the Rev. Gregory Drumwright, Edith Ann Jones, a woman who did not get a chance to vote Saturday, and a group called Justice for the Next Generation. They accuse Sheriff Terry Johnson and Graham Police Chief Kristy Cole of violating protesters’ rights to free speech and assembly under the First, Fourth, and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, rights protected under the Voting Rights Act and violating the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which was intended to protect Blacks’ voting rights after the Civil War.
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“The police violence in Graham, N.C., perpetrated against a group of peaceful and primarily Black protestors over the weekend is yet another clear violation of the right to free speech and the right to vote,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, according to a news release.
Graham police and the Sheriff contend the organizers of the “I Am Change March to the Polls” violated the terms of their protest permit by blocking the streets and bringing a gas-powered generator onto courthouse grounds. Attempts to contact officials with the police department and Sheriff's Office were not immediately successful Tuesday afternoon.
The suit is aimed at protecting Drumwright’s and J4tNG’s planned get-out-the-vote march on Election Day and anti-racism protests in the weeks to come, including at the Confederate monument in front of the Alamance County Historic Courthouse in downtown Graham, according to the suit.
Drumwright is one of the named plaintiffs in another suit against Graham and Alamance County over the city’s old parade ordinance requiring a permit for two or more people to demonstrate downtown, and for protesters to have access to the grounds of the Old Courthouse, including the Confederate monument. He also organized a large march in July ending at the courthouse. According to the suit, the only major logistical difference between the July and Oct. 31 events was the intent to move on to the polls after Saturday's rally.
Because the city’s permit ordinance had been repealed in the face of the previous lawsuit, it was more complicated for Drumwright to get streets closed for the march. The City Council told him to coordinate with Cole, and, according to the suit, Cole told him Oct. 20 and Oct. 30 that she would not close the streets for the march or allow any stages to be set up on the street because the City Council had not authorized it.
The county attorney agreed march organizers could set up a stage on the courthouse grounds.
But on the morning of Oct. 31, Cole supposedly met with Drumwright at Wayman Chapel AME Church on North Main Street, where the march started, and told him she would close the street for the march to the courthouse, telling him, “The street is yours.”
Police and state troopers escorted the march down North Main Street. At Hardin Street, a block from the courthouse, Drumwright stopped the crowd and spoke. On Court Square the crowd stopped again and silently knelt for close to nine minutes to commemorate George Floyd. Several of Floyd’s relatives were part of the march.
Afterward, Drumwright told the crowd to wait while the stage was set up in a crosswalk area next to the monument. A video posted on social media shows him telling the crowd the streets were theirs, to which many responded, “Whose streets? Our streets.”
“(W)ithin seconds, suddenly and without warning,” according to the suit, Graham Police started spraying pepper spray while many older marchers were still getting to their feet. Drumwright, according to the suit, spoke to police to de-escalate the situation while members of J4tNG were arrested as they crossed the street from Sesquicentennial Park to the courthouse grounds.
Just before 1 p.m., according to the suit, sheriff’s deputies started to remove the generator powering the public address system without warning. Drumwright went to ask why. According to the suit, deputies and police officers again started spraying the crowd with pepper spray without warning. Among those hurt in the incident was an elderly woman in an electric scooter who went into convulsions.
Police barricades made it hard to get onto the sidewalks, and officers shouted for the crowd to disperse, but did not give them time to move before spraying them again while they were trying to leave, according to the suit. They also blocked West Elm Street so marchers could not head to the polls or get away from the cloud of pepper spray.
In recent press conferences, police officers and sheriff's deputies disputed that they offered no warnings. Graham officials said they gave the crowd three warnings to disperse before using pepper spray, and even then they said the spray was aimed at the ground and never directly at anyone.
People in the crowd were sprayed multiple times, according to the suit, making it hard to see and walk. Several children — the suit mentions a 3-, 5- and 11-year-old — were sprayed and began vomiting.
Twenty people, including two poll observers and a reporter from The Alamance News, were arrested.
A video linked in the suit shows police restraining marchers, admitting to spraying children and cursing at marchers as they got away from the scene.
“Some voters, including Plaintiff Jones were actually deterred from voting. Because of Plaintiff Jones’s pepper spray related injuries, she could not go to the polls that day as planned,” according to the suit.
The suit alleges Cole and Johnson planned the violent crowd control together and calls that plan an attempt to “intimidate threaten and coerce citizens … from participating in the election.”
Plaintiffs, according to the suit, not only had their voting rights violated, but also suffered physical, emotional and mental injuries.
The suit asks the District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina to declare the dispersal orders and use of pepper spray as illegal violations of demonstrators’ rights and award them damages and attorney’s fees.
This article originally appeared on Times-News: Alamance sheriff, Graham police chief sued over pepper spray incident
