A judge in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on Thursday decided to reconsider the $1 million bail he set for numerous rioters arrested for arson and other offenses during unrest resulting from an officer-involved shooting of a knife-wielding black man.
Magisterial District Judge Bruce Roth set the seven-figure bail for nine of 13 arrestees, who were apprehended Monday following a violent response to the Sunday death of Ricardo Muñoz, who was shot dead after charging officers with a blade, according to Lancaster Online.
Roth decided to revisit the bail amounts after private lawyers filed petitions on behalf of several of the defendants, the local outlet reported.
Finally, a city responds seriously to abject mayhem! “Lancaster protesters held on whopping $1 million bail each after alleged riots” https://t.co/fA4jAMpPlm
— Tammy Bruce (@HeyTammyBruce) September 15, 2020
The judge also sought to provide attorneys for all of the arrestees in an effort to reconsider their holding amounts, Lancaster Online reported.
“And at this point, I want all the defendants to be treated equally, so I tried to procure attorneys for all of them, so they could all have bail hearings at the same time,” Roth said, according to the local outlet.
The alleged violent demonstrators have been charged with arson, vandalism, felonious riot participation and protest misdemeanors, Lancaster Online reported.
Several local organizations have come forward to support the release of the inmates “as soon as possible,” according to a Facebook post from SafeHouse Lancaster.
“In a collaborative effort between The Lancaster NAACP, Lancaster Stands Up, SafeHouse Lancaster, and the Lancaster Legal Collective a plan has been made to bring our community members in jail home as soon as possible,” SafeHouse wrote in the post.
“As of now NAACP and Lancaster legal collective are working to get lawyers in touch with families so they can have representation.”
The independent organization also said that the Lancaster NAACP would be setting up a fund to collect the inmates’s bail money from the public. (RELATED: ‘Whatever Force Is Necessary’: Police Union Bosses Say What Needs To Be Done To Quell Riots)
“The Lancaster NAACP will be launching a redress fund so that people can donate towards all the legal fees that each individual will have over the next few months,” the post read.
“Now more than ever we must come together as a community and help one another. Together we will see justice, together we will have our friends and family back with us.”
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