Last year nearly two dozen demonstrators, including Princeton University professor and civil rights activist Cornel West, were arrested while protesting the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk policy. Today, the Associated Press reports, they went on trial:
Some 22 people arrested in October outside a Harlem police station appeared in court Monday. Two accepted offers to get their cases dismissed by staying out of trouble for six months …
Police say protestors blocked the entrance to the precinct and ignored orders to leave.
Defense lawyers have said there’s reasonable doubt that any laws were broken.
The judge on Monday barred them from making another argument: that the protestors’ conduct was justified.
Read more at WNYT.com.
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