The Michigan Daily - Friday, May 25, 1984 - Page 11
CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS ON TRIAL

Chicago citizens sue city over false arrests

CHICAGO (AP) - As Angel Martinez
recalls it, he was changing the oil in his
 car when some police officers strode
up, asked for identification, told him to
stand against a wall and handcuffed
him.
The police found nothing in his car
but school books, he said, but they
whisked him off to a district station and
charged him with disorderly conduct.
MARTINEZ, then enrolled in junior
college, was jailed for five hours before
putting up $50 bail. He appeared in
court two weeks later as scheduled, he
said, but the arresting officer didn't.
The case was dismissed.
Martinez said he suspected he was
arrested because "I'm tall, dark and
have a beard." However, he added,
"I'm 26, I have a family, I don't wear
gang colors. I'm busy trying to take
care of all five of us and I don't have
time to hang out on corners."
Two years after his arrest, Martinez
and four young blacks similarly
caught in police sweeps through their
neighborhood streets are suing the city
for $20,000 in damages each.
HUNDREDS of thousands of other
people picked up on disorderly conduct
charges but never prosecuted could do
the same if a federal judge refuses to
rescind his ruling that the arrests
violated constitutional rights of due
process and peaceful assembly.
U.S. District Judge Prentice Mar-
shall several weeks ago ruled the
arrests illegal in a default judgment
spurred by repeated failure of city at-
Salvadoran'
guardsmen
found guilty
(Continued from Page 1)
The jury heard evidence that the
guardsmen stopped the women as they
drove away from El Salvador's airport,
raped and killed them and left their
bodies on a remote road near Zacatec-
dluca, 26 miles southeast of San
Salvador. Rape charges were not
brought against the guardsmen.
A confession by Carlos Joaquin Con-
treras led to the Nov. 15, 1982 indic-
tments of the former guardsmen, but
Wednesday he said that the five men
had been tortured and offered bribes to
confess.
The other convicted men where Sgt.
Luis Colindres Aleman, Pvts. Daniel
Canales Ramierez, Jose Roberto
Moreno Canjuras and Francisco Orlan-
do Contreras Recinos. Officials said the
four would be told of the conviction
today.

torneys to show up for hearings in a
class-action lawsuit. Martinez and the
four other men are the identified
plaintiffs in the suit.
Marshall ordered the city to expunge
the records of 800,000 to 1 'million
arrests made in the past five years and
notify the victims they can sue for
damages. The city has appealed and
Marshall is expected to rule shortly.
ROBERT Fioretti, the assistant cor-
poration counsel who is handling the
case for the city, said it would cost
Chicago millions of dollars to comply

with the ruling - combining arrest
records to find those affected, ex-
punging their arrests, notifying them
that they can sue and paying damages.
Just the cost of printing and mailing
the notification letters would run more
than $1 million, he said.
"The costs are .staggering," said
Fioretti.
POLICE Superintendent Fred Rice,
who was appointed after the sweep
arrest policy was halted by consent
decree in April 1983, said that "cer-
tainly if 800,000 sued, you could see how

it would really clog the courts."
However, Harvey Grossman, legal
director for the American Civil Liber-
ties Union, which in February 1983 filed
the suit alleging that the disorderly
conduct arrests violated the Con-
stitution, said the police sweeps were
"a vehicle of social control."
"Any policeman might use the
technique individually on a vindictive
basis," Grossman said. "There were
lots of people who were arrested night
after night, sometimes by the same
policeman."

House approves Salvadoran aid
From AP and UPI
WASHINGTON - The House voted approved on a 267-154 vote in the wake ONCE THE measure clea
yesterday to provide $62 million in of elections in the troubled Central Congress, it will bring to $126 milli
military aid for El Salvador, but American nation, while the $21 million the total military aid to El Salvador
refused to go along with President in rebel aid was rejected on a 241-177 the firstfive months of this year.
Reagan's request for $21 million more vote with most Democrats opposed. Rep. Clarence Long (D-Md.) cha
for CIA-backed rebels fighting man of the House Appropriations su
Nicaragua's Marxist-led government. APPROVAL of the Salvadoran aid committee on foreign operation
The $62 million for El Salvador was was seen as a sign of support for El reversed his earlier opposition to t

rs
on
in
ir-
ub-
ns'
he

Salvador's President-elect Jose
Napoleon Duarte, who made a plea for
the money and promises of reform in El
Salvador when he visited Washington
earlier this week.
The House also was encouraged by
the verdict, only hours earlier in El
Salvador, finding five former
Salvadoran national guardsmen guilty
of the 1980 murders of four American
churchwomen.
The $62 million provided in the bill for
El Salvador is for emergency military
aid and includes $32 million to repay the
Pentagon budget for the equipment and
supplies that Reagan transferred to El
Salvador in April when the bill was
stalled by a House-Senate conflict.
The bill contains conditions calling
for periodic presidential reports to
Congress on Salvadoran human rights
progress and a cutoff of aid in the event
of a military coup.

$62 million. Long said he was reassured
by Duarte - who met with Long in a
private session Tuesday - and his
promise to carry out tnajor reforms in
El Salvador. "I believe it is important
to provide symbolic support for what
your presidency offers for the future of
El Salvador and its people," Long said
in a letter to Duarte.
House Speaker Thomas O'Neill (D-
Mass.) opposed both the El Salvador
and Nicaraguan aid requests. He
angrily rejected a plan floated Wed-
nesday to provide $2 million to close
down the Nicaraguan rebel operations
and $4 million to relocate the rebels.
The Central American funds were
part of a package of about $1.1 billion of
emergency appropriations for various
government programs, which the
Senate tacked onto a routine House-
passed appropriation measure.

Reagan
.. , gets more defense funding

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