Facts about the City of Detroit’s countersuit against protesters. The City’s lawyers are seeking $200k in taxpayer money to fund the countersuit.

THREAD

This is the first time the City of Detroit has ever sued victims of police brutality. The City’s lawyer admitted the point is to drain resources from the movement against police brutality.

The @ACLUofMichigan has said that the countersuit is “an attempt to manipulate the judicial process to do what police violence in the streets could not, which is to silence protesters.”

The City is working w the National Police Association, who filed an amicus brief for the countersuit. This is not a law enforcement organization, but a rightwing nonprofit that aims to “fight back against cop-haters,” and implement “‘Broken Windows’ policing policy.”

City Council member @Raquel4Detroit has said about the countersuit: “If we as a city begin countersuing residents for protesting, it’s setting the first stone on the path of making it even more legally permissible to violate people’s First Amendment rights.”

The countersuit came about as retaliation for a federal police brutality lawsuit we filed, which has already won a restraining order against DPD for their brutal tactics during the protests incl. chokeholds.

In response, the City tried to say that this wasn’t a chokehold

Using the courts to try to crush racial justice movements when police violence in the streets has failed to is a segregationist tactic.

For example, Dr. King was jailed in Birmingham because the city refused to give him a permit for a civil rights demonstration.

The City claims that protesters conspired to break the law, but does not identify which laws were broken. This makes the countersuit “a very unusual document according to Len Niehoff, a UofM law professor.