G20 Suit Says Arrestees Were Bystanders, Not Protesters

Another lawsuit has been filed against the city of Pittsburgh in connection with arrests made during the G20 Summit September 24-25 last year. Two men, who at that time were students at the University of Pittsburgh, say they were bystanders and were wrongly swept up in arrests of protesters in the Schenley Plaza area of Oakland.
Army Second Lieutenant Ryan Kingston was a senior at Pitt and a military police trainee at the time. He and Nathan Poloni were both jailed for several hours on charges of failure to disperse as police responded to anti-G20 protests. The charges against Kingston and Poloni were later dropped. The city has not responded to this lawsuit, one of at least four filed by people arrested during the summit. However, this suit alleges the plaintiffs were swept up in a policy that suspended the rights of citizens just for being near some protests. Their attorney called the arrest action..."de facto martial law."