WTC Attack Benefits Long Beach Ca Police -Anarchists Giving Up Legal Fight

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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-000075995sep22.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dcalifornia

    Anarchists Giving Up Legal Fight
    Court: Some charged in a riot plead no contest amid doubts they
    could get a fair hearing after the terrorist attacks. Others may go
    to trial.

    By LOUIS SAHAGUN, TIMES STAFF WRITER

    Last week's terrorism attacks on the East Coast have
    complicated--and, in some cases, derailed--the trials of dozens of
    anarchists arrested in a violent May Day confrontation with Long
    Beach police.

    The anarchists previously had been upbeat about their imminent
    trials, which they had hoped to turn into public forums for their
    radical political sentiments.

    Now, defense attorneys wonder if their 37 fiercely anti-capitalist
    clients can get a fair trial in Long Beach or anywhere else on such
    counts as riot, attempted riot, unlawful assembly, and conspiracy to
    commit a crime. Over the past week, six defendants who had promised
    to challenge police tactics instead have pleaded no contest or
    guilty to misdemeanor charges. More pleas are expected, according to
    deputy city prosecutor David Gordon.

    "When Sept. 11 occurred, they realized that no one would pay much
    attention to claims of police misconduct while hundreds of officers
    lay buried in rubble in New York," he said. "I think that by early
    November there will be but a handful of hard cores left wanting to
    go to trial."

    Until last week, the demonstrators had predicted exoneration,
    claiming they were victims of police brutality. Beyond that, they
    stressed that identification would be difficult because all of them
    had been wearing masks and black clothes in downtown Long Beach
    during the May 1 rally decrying corporate greed. In addition, they
    pointed to a federal judge's recent ruling that questioned the
    validity of a city law requiring 30 days' notice for a public
    demonstration.

    Now such optimism has vanished, according to one prospective expert
    witness for the defense, Larry George, a professor of political
    science at Cal State Long Beach.

    "The tragic events," George said, "may well have changed the
    background climate to the point where the defendants would be
    identified as enemies of the state and perpetrators of violence."

    About 95 people, mainly teenagers and young adults from Southern
    California, were arrested during the protest that erupted into a
    running street brawl with police in riot gear. At least a dozen
    demonstrators were injured, and many more reportedly suffered
    scrapes and bruises. Police said their officers escaped serious
    injuries, but some were bruised and cut by thrown rocks and
    grappling with demonstrators.

    To avoid sapping the city's legal resources if all the defendants
    were tried simultaneously in one courtroom, authorities divided them
    into small groups to be tried separately and appointed publicly
    financed defense attorneys.

    Long before the East Coast terrorism, 23 of those arrested in the
    demonstration were sentenced to probation and time served under plea
    bargains offered to them by city prosecutors. In addition, more than
    two dozen juveniles were released and most had the charges dropped.

    Two other adults are awaiting trial on felony assault charges. As of
    Friday, 31 more were each facing six misdemeanor charges.

    The first two defendants to go to trial were Louise Emily Van Der
    Laan, 19, and Yutaka Bazil Yokoyama, 31, both of whom pleaded no
    contest on Sept. 12 to six misdemeanor counts just after a jury was
    impaneled.

    Superior Court Judge Brad Andrews sentenced them to three years'
    probation and 30 days of community service.

    Their pleadings came less than an hour after Andrews dismissed a
    motion by defense attorney Lynda Vitale to delay the case for at
    least a month.

    "The events of Sept. 11," Vitale said in an interview, "would have
    made it impossible for jurors to remain unbiased and fairly weigh
    the evidence without thoughts of what happened."

    Next in line for trial is Christopher J. Harrington, who is
    represented by Torrance lawyer Alex Griggs.

    "These people were exercising their rights to free speech," Griggs
    said. "It would be a shame if the current climate is such that they
    are curtailed from doing that."

    Nonetheless, Griggs said his client, whose trial is scheduled to
    start Oct. 10, is considering the implications of avoiding trial by
    entering a plea.

    On Thursday, four other defendants pleaded no contest to at least
    one misdemeanor charge.  Among them was Adam Steudle, 20, whose
    Culver City attorney Noah Allen conceded, "There's a huge fear that
    the events of Sept. 11 had a domino effect on jurors."

    The defendants insist that their goal was a peaceful downtown
    demonstration and march on International Workers Day behind a large
    banner that read: "Capitalism Stole My Life."

    The trouble started after some demonstrators, chanting and cursing
    against "the police state," threw rocks at officers, according to
    police.

    "The rocks got it going," recalled Long Beach Police Sgt. Erik
    Herzog.

    Downtown streets were shut down for four hours as police fired on
    some demonstrators with rubber bullets and beanbags while chasing
    them in and around an area known for its high-end bistros, financial
    institutions and hotels.

    Law enforcement authorities said it cost the city $100,000 in
    overtime pay and the use of equipment, including a helicopter, to
    handle the disruption.

    At the scene, police collected evidence including rocks, hammers, a
    slingshot, bags of ball bearings, pointed sticks, gas masks, plastic
    bags filled with human feces, bombs used by fishermen to scare off
    seals, and fireworks, including one item that resembled a hand
    grenade.

    Police said they also determined that some of the demonstrators had
    arrived wearing crude shields under their baggy black sweaters and
    sweat shirts: thick layers of newspaper wrapped in duct tape and
    strapped around their arms and over their chests.

    Critical to the prosecution have been 500 photographs and 14 hours
    of videotaped footage of the demonstration taken by police and
    witnesses in the vicinity of the bustling corner of 1st Street and
    Pine Avenue.

    Deputy city prosecutor Andrea Davalos said, "We went over details in
    the photos and video footage, frame by frame, over and over, 12
    hours a day, Saturdays and Sundays.

    "We noted people's backpacks, shirts, logos, shoes, even the tears
    in their jeans," she said.  "Eventually, we were able to make
    positive identification of each and every one of them. We know what
    each of them did and when they did it."

    Prosecutors matched that information with photographs of suspects
    when they were in custody and unmasked.

    City prosecutor Tom Reeves plans to play an edited version of the
    videotape in court, including slow-motion scenes of rocks being
    hurled at police.

    "They conspired to come to this city armed and disguised for the
    purpose of creating a riot, chaos and disorder," Gordon said. "But
    now there are too many ghosts floating around in the courtroom for
    anyone with half a brain to expose themselves to a jury or a judge."

    In the meantime, local support for the anarchists has been mixed.

    Mark Bowen, a Los Angeles Unified School District high school
    teacher and president of the Long Beach chapter of the American
    Civil Liberties Union, remains skeptical of local police.

    It was not a crime, he said, if demonstrators cursed at police and
    carried signs denouncing the influence of multinational
    corporations. "The police were beating the anarchists with clubs,
    and I would not rule out the possibility that they planted
    evidence," Bowen said.

    Sharon Cotrell of the Long Beach Legal Monitoring Committee said the
    defendants have been "forced by circumstances to plead, which is
    very sad," she said. "These young people did no wrong. The police
    were outrageous."

    Some other observers are not so sure.

    Until Sept. 11, members of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Long
    Beach had been considering a proposal to back the defendants.

    But Pat Marr, who is a member of the church's Social Concerns
    Committee, said such a move seems unlikely now.

    "It sounds like it was a very difficult situation for police," she
    said. "And with the World Trade Center situation going on, it is not
    a good time to be in the sort of trial the arrestees are fighting."

    Added Marr: "Personally, their cases are on a far back burner."