A 26-year-old Occupy DC protester who admitted calling U.S. Park Police officers “fucking pigs” before they immobilized him with a Taser and placed him in handcuffs is suing the federal government for using excessive force while arresting him.
At least two YouTube videos show the Jan. 29, 2012 confrontation between Pennsylvania anti-capitalist activist Ryan Barton Lash and Park Police, including the moment Lash taunted the officers.
“You said to clean up the trash in the fucking park, right?” Lash is heard yelling after tearing down National Park Service notices announcing the coming enforcement of a no-camping rule in Washington, D.C.’s McPherson Square.
“Here’s your fucking trash, you fucking pigs.”
The parties dispute several details of his arrest. (RELATED VIDEO: “Occupy” goes to Washington)
Lash claims police stunned him with a Taser twice — once to knock him to the ground, and a second time after he was in handcuffs. Police, however, contend the weapon was only fired a single time.
One of the YouTube videos appears to show Officer Jennifer Lemke firing the Taser at Lash and then removing her finger from the trigger after he was on the ground and in handcuffs.
“Bring it tomorrow! Bring it tomorrow!” Lash is heard on the YouTube videos shouting to other protesters after he was on the ground, handcuffed. “Bring it!” (RELATED — Conservatives to Occupy DC: “We’re taking back the park!”)
Lash walked to a squad car under his own power, but refused to get inside. Park Police called a transport van instead.
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In another YouTube video of the same event, the videographer is heard taunting police after they lead Lash away. “You think we’re fucking messing now, motherfucker? You just started so much shit, cocksucker,” he says. “Fucking cowards! Fucking cowards! You can consider your jobs lost! … You’re gonna start a fucking riot! Is that what you want?”
Lash first filed his lawsuit in federal court on May 22, suing Lemke and Sergeant Todd Reid, her supervisor in McPherson Square.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Marina Utgoff Braswell failed on Dec. 7 in her bid to have that first lawsuit dismissed, but it languishes in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on a technicality: In May, Lash’s attorney did not properly serve Lemke and Reid with notice that they were being sued.
Lash describes himself on his Facebook page as Occupy DC’s “General of Fun Committee.” Also on his Facebook profile, he claimed on Christmas Day that he has “been deemed a domestic terrorist by Homeland Security” under the National Defense Authorization Act.
His latest lawsuit names the federal government as the sole defendant.
Ryan Barton Lash Sues USA Over Occupy Arrest
McPherson Square was the site of a three-month-long tent encampment by protesters demanding higher taxes for wealthy Americans, tighter regulatory control of Wall Street banks, more jobs for the unemployed and the banishment of corporate money from political campaigns.
On Jan. 29, Park Police posted notices in the loosely organized tent city, announcing that the National Park Service, which manages public spaces in the nation’s capitol, would begin enforcing a long-time rule against overnight camping the following day. (RELATED: Park Service decides to enforce regulations, evict occupiers)
“[I]ndividual violators may be subject to arrest and their property subject to seizure as evidence,” the notices read.
Lash, described in news reports as an unemployed landscaper, concedes in his own lawsuit that he behaved in a way that provoked the police, chanting “fuck your notices” while removing the leaflets from tents in the square. He claims he stopped tearing down the flyers after Lemke warned him that he would face arrest for disorderly conduct.
“As Plaintiff [Lash] was walking away,” Lash concedes, “he said to a group of Park Police officers, ‘You want us to clean up the trash in the park, right? Well here’s your fucking trash you fucking pigs.'” (RELATED VIDEO — Former union boss at Occupy event: Our goal is to “overthrow the capitalist system and build communism”)
Lemke, Reid and two other Park Police officers, he says, then approached him and arrested him on a disorderly conduct charge.
In a Facebook posting in March, Lash wrote that those charges were dismissed.
Lash also claims officers grabbed him from behind without warning, and didn’t identify themselves as police before restraining him. But the YouTube videos show Lash surrounded by police in uniform.
In an affidavit, Sgt. Reid wrote that he saw Lash c0ntinuing to tear down the Park Service notices after he was warned not to. “Mr. Lash refused to cooperate” with the arrest,” Reid added, “and swung his arms in a violent manner, shoving the officers, and attempting to walk away from them despite repeated verbal commands to stand still.”
Park Police “used a taser on Mr. Lash only once,” Reid wrote, noting that “Tasers can be used when a subject resists arrest and the Officer believes that the subject’s actions pose a potential threat.”
In the federal government’s ultimately unsuccessful dismissal motion responding to Lash’s first lawsuit, Braswell wrote that Lash “is physically bigger than two of the three officers trying to arrest him,” and that he “continued to actively resist even after an officer grabbed him from behind … The officers tried to wrestle plaintiff to the ground by knocking his foot out from under him, but he continued to actively resist.”
Lash claimed in his May lawsuit that the 5-second Taser burst left him with debilitating injuries including panic attacks and “‘ghost pains’ on his back where he was shocked and around his right wrist along the thumb where it is still numb.”
But in a YouTube video shot September 21, Lash is seen giving an interview outside the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York City, moving freely and holding a cardboard protest sign with both hands.
In the interview he said Occupy protesters were among the first in line for tickets to buy the new iPhone 5, and planned to “sell off the spots online so that we can take the money and donate it to things that Apple doesn’t like. … Because we don’t like Apple, because they have … slave labor over in China.”
Lash also grasped a 100 Yen banknote — Japanese currency — to illustrate the wage rates of employees at Foxconn, Apple’s chief manufacturer, in China. The interviewer, Sam Roberts, didn’t appear to notice the error.
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Attorney Jeffrey Light, who is representing Lash in his lawsuit against the federal government, did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
Light is described in online directories as a patent lawyer. He is chairman of Patients Not Patents, an activist organization that works to block patents of pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies on the grounds that they drive up the cost of health care.
“A committed activist, Light has been active in the National Lawyers Guild, has worked on political campaigns for progressive politicians, and has extensive experience advocating for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality,” his online biography reads.
In January 2012, Light filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court on behalf of 10 Occupy DC activists, in an attempt to stop the Park Service from enforcing its no-camping policy in both McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza. A judge agreed with the government and permitted the Jan. 30 enforcement.
The lawsuit’s other claims, however, are still unresolved. They include complaints that Park Service employees destroyed tents and seized personal belongings of people in McPherson Square who were not camping overnight.
In February, three months before Lash filed his first lawsuit, he wrote in a YouTube comment that he “wasn’t denied medical attention and hold no animosity towards the Park Police.”
“I was taken by the police to the hospital,” he wrote in another comment. “And I hold no animosity towards Officer Lemke.”
In a third, he claimed: “They tased me because I called ’em pigs.”
