NEW ORLEANS -- Two men arrested along a parade route in 2007 asked a federal jury Wednesday to decide if the New Orleans Police Department has a custom of arresting or threatening people who videotape or photograph officers.
Seven jurors heard closing arguments in a trial over claims that police officers violated the constitutional rights of plaintiffs Greg Griffith and Noah Learned.
Griffith, now 34 and living in Cambridge, Mass., claims he was falsely arrested for filming officers with a digital camera.
"The bottom line is that the police needed a reason to arrest Greg and Noah for filming, so they made one up and then they tried to cover it up," said Will Gamble, a Tulane Law Clinic student attorney representing Griffith and Learned.
The two, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, are seeking monetary damages and a court order that could require the department to changes its practices.
Franz Zibilich, a lawyer for the city, said Griffith and Learned interfered with officers breaking up a fight. They were charged with crossing a police cordon, but the charges were dismissed about two months later.
Zibilich accused Griffith of lying about the incident, including the extent of injuries he allegedly suffered during his arrest.
"You want to send a message?" he asked jurors. "Send a message to this liar: He's not going to waste your time anymore."
The plaintiffs have cited 11 other incidents since 2005 in which police allegedly tried to stop people from taping, photographing or observing officers.
During the trial, several journalists described run-ins they had with New Orleans police officers.
Associated Press Television News videojournalist Rich Matthews said he and his crew were filming an arrest in the city's French Quarter several weeks after Katrina when an officer shoved him against a car and ordered him to stop taping. A video of the incident showed that when Matthews held up his credentials, the officer grabbed him, leaned him backward over a car, jabbed him in the stomach and unleashed a profanity-laced tirade.
Times-Picayune city editor Gordon Russell said he and a New York Times photographer were driving through the city after Katrina when they encountered a group of officers in the aftermath of an apparent shoot-out. Russell said the officers ordered them out of their car at gunpoint and briefly confiscated his notebook and the photographer's camera.
Gamble said the journalists' testimony shows the department's officers routinely violate citizens' First Amendment rights.
"Without your intervention, officers will continue to act on this custom," he told jurors.
Zibilich scoffed at the claim that police target people with cameras, saying a "handful of isolated incidents" doesn't amount to a pattern of behavior.
"There's nothing here to suggest transparency doesn't exist or there was a cover-up," he said.
Learned, now 29 and living in New Orleans, was a student at the University of Louisiana- Lafayette when he was arrested. Griffith had come to the city after Katrina in 2005 to volunteer at a health clinic. They met at Kent State University in Ohio, where they co-founded a "Cop Watch" program to monitor police activity.
"Cop Watch? It's not Cop Watch. It's Cop Interference," Zibilich said.
Police Superintendent Warren Riley is named as a defendant in the suit, along with the two officers who arrested Griffith and Learned: D'Meecko Hughes and Brian Harrison, who has since left the department.
"Unless Superintendent Riley lives under a rock, he should know about these events," Gamble said.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
