Since then police officers have staked out the Convergence Center, photographing people as they come and go and writing down license plate numbers. Police helicopters have repeatedly circled at low elevations, shining spotlights at night. People leaving the center have been cited for trivial or nonexistent infractions. On the night of August 9, a police cruiser followed two women walking out of the Convergence Center. They were stopped, searched, handcuffed and arrested.
Police read and confiscated their political literature.
The local American Civil Liberties Union chapter has already successfully filed two separate federal civil rights lawsuits, in each instance obtaining an injunction to prevent further rights violations. In the second case, United States District Judge Dean Pregerson ordered the LAPD not to seize puppets or written materials, and not to enter the Convergence Center without first obtaining an order from him. He refused, however, to stop LAPD surveillance of the protest headquarters. In another federal lawsuit, filed Friday, three protesters arrested last week while unfurling a huge banner from the roof of a nearby hotel allege that police nearly killed two of them by cutting lines as they rappelled down the side of the building.