“He’s not our president!”
That’s what the demonstrators, organized by the Democracy Coalition, were chanting on April 27, 2001, as they walked from the Bullock Museum over to the Governor’s Mansion to protest an Austin visit by George W. Bush, installed in the White House a couple of months before by the U.S. Supreme Court. As the group of protesters — 30 to 40 people, by several estimates — reached the northeast corner of 11th and Lavaca, they were stopped by a cordon of police, motorcycles, and eventually a couple of horses. All were apparently determined to prevent them from reaching the west side of Lavaca behind the mansion — a common protest area, where a smaller group of pro-Bush demonstrators and a flock of media were already in place. Before long, tempers flared, a horse either charged or bolted into the demonstrators, and the chants became, “This is what fascism looks like!” and “Fascist pigs!”
Last Friday, a Travis County civil jury cleared the two APD horse officers — Kenneth Farr and Michael Carlson — of liability for violating the constitutional rights of the Democracy Coalition and 13 individual plaintiffs, Pam Thompson, and Sonia Santana. The day before, Judge Margaret Cooper had dropped the city of Austin as a defendant, accepting Assistant City Attorney Robin Sanders’ argument that the plaintiffs had failed to demonstrate an unconstitutional “custom, policy, or practice” by the city. “You cannot hold the city liable based on a single incident,” Sanders told Naked City. “You have to show a pattern of abuse, and [the plaintiffs] did not allege a history of misuse of the mounted patrol.”
“The city should have been a defendant,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Jim Harrington. “Once the judge excluded the city, the handwriting was on the wall.” Harrington said the lawsuit was primarily an attempt to require the APD to provide “free speech training” to officers — to make it part of city policy that officers must protect and defend the right to free speech. “All they get is physical training in crowd control,” said Harrington. “That’s not sufficient.” Asked in court by Harrington whether the mounted officers are given any training about the free speech rights of protestors, Carlson replied, “Nothing involving rights, no sir.” Harrington says that in addition to a “pattern of misconduct,” an inadequate policy or insufficient training can also become grounds for constitutional claims.
Following the verdict, Harrington said some jurors told him they “didn’t want to punish the officers,” but that if the city had remained a defendant, the outcome might have been different. He expects to appeal and perhaps include supervisors as defendants in a subsequent suit.
This article appears in January 24 • 2003.
