Opinion ID: 2067743
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Hart Senate Office Building (the Hart Building)

Text: Although appellants recount the evidence of the Hart Building demonstration and arrests in one or the other of their briefs, they make no argument challenging their convictions for unlawful assembly arising from that demonstration, so that any such challenge has been waived. See, e.g., Ramos v. United States, 569 A.2d 158, 162 n. 5 (D.C.1990). Nonetheless, because that evidence provides context for the actions of the United States Capitol Police in arresting them for the other violations, we summarize it briefly. According to testimony that the trial judge credited, 300 to 350 people had gathered in the Upper Senate Park, an outdoor grassy area, on September 26 for a demonstration authorized by permit to protest the war in Iraq. U.S. Capitol Police Officer Galope testified that some fifty of these individuals then entered the Hart Building where, in the first floor atrium, they began singing, and chanting, and reading ... very loudly. According to Galope, other persons in the atrium complained to the police about the volume of the noise. There were onlookers all the way up to the 8th floor of the atrium (some of whom, too, were calling and complaining of the loudness), and persons passing through the atrium had to move around the demonstrators. The trial judge found that, although the demonstration was not loud, there was some level of disruption and incommoding or blocking of movement. Thus, he found it to be a reasonable [exercise of] discretion when the police, after giving three verbal warnings to the group to disperse, arrested those members who refused to do so.