Judge Rules That NYPD Made Illegal Arrests During 2004 GOP Convention

Judge Rules That The Mass Arrests Carried Out By The Bloomberg Administration During The 2004 Republican National Convention Were Illegal

Federal District Court Judge Richard J. Sullivan has ruled that officers with the New York Police Department illegally arrested large numbers of protesters at a demonstration on Fulton Street in Downtown Manhattan during the 2004 Republican National Convention, The New York Times has reported.

Judge Sullivan's ruling faulted the Bloomberg administration for having "lacked the required probable cause because the police were unaware of whether each individual protester had broken the law," The Times reported.

“With this ruling,” said Christopher T. Dunn, a lawyer with the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), “the time has come for the city to put this controversy behind it, to settle the rest of the convention cases, and to make sure that mass arrests never happen again here.”

Mr. Dunn noted that the judge had “emphatically rejected the city’s claim that it could make mass arrests of protesters.”

The NYCLU represents some of the activists, who were arrested.