Judge Dismisses Case Of Bick Demonstrators

The cases of 25 persons arrested for disturbing the peace and trespassing during a civil rights demonstration outside the Hayes-Bickford restaurant July 10 were dismissed Tuesday in Cambridge District Court.

Judge Haven Parker '22 ordered the dismissal after the seven defense lawyers signed a statement commending Cambridge police for their behavior during the picketing, and releasing them from any possible civil action.

Defense counsel Edward Barshak said last night that Judge Parker was concerned with setting the record straight concerning the police's conduct, and after a 40 minute meeting with the attorneys agreed to dismiss the case if such a statement were signed.

Before making the "deal," the attorneys discussed it with Alan Gartner, head of the Boston chapter of CORE, which had sponsored the demonstration protesting the Bickford chain's alleged discriminatory hiring practices. Gartner agreed that there had been no evidence of police butality.

The statement read: "The police department of the City of Cambridge, under the direction of Sgt. John J. Norton, acted with intelligence and restraint in a difficult situation. In particular there was no brutality on the part of the Cambridge police. It is regrettable that among the many placards in the demonstration, one among them carried that unfounded assertion."

After reading the statement aloud, Judge Parker asked if any of the defendants objected to it. When no objections were raised, the case was dismissed.

(Before the trial, however, several demonstrators maintained that some people were badly beaten by police.)

In addition, all 25 defendants signed release forms in which they pledged not to bring suit against the police for false arrest.

Barshak said he felt the police had only committed one error in handling the demonstration, but one which was irrelevant to the case. When the number of demonstrators had swelled to 39 and had attracted a crowd of about 250 onlookers, Sgt. Norton spoke to the group over a loud speaker and told them to disperse. When the leader of the demonstrators asked Norton if they could continue picketing if they stopped making noise, Norton said no. Barshak asserted that the officer was in error, but said it was extraneous to the case since the charge of disturbing the peace could have been made on the basis of the noise that was caused before the police arrived.

If the agreement had not been made with Judge Parker, would the demonstrators have been found guilty? "The Judge probably would have made a guilt finding against at least some of the defendants," Barshak guessed. He pointed out that there was a "gray area around what constituted protected free speech and what constituted disturbing the peace."

At a press conference after the trial Gartner said the case was "Boston's first mass civil rights trial." He termed the decision "a validation of the right of people to demonstrate peaceably."