Heavy-handed police presence at EGT in at Port of Longview, WA, September 22, 2011. Don Ryan/AP photo
TACOMA, WA [September 22, 2011] – The International Longshore and Warehouse Union and ILWU Local 21 today responded to ongoing police brutality and harassment related to its labor dispute with EGT Development at the Port of Longview by filing a civil rights lawsuit against Mark Nelson, the Sherriff of Cowlitz County; Jim Duscha, City of Longview Police Chief; Cowlitz County; and the City of Longview.
“The ILWU is filing this lawsuit to stop the abuse of longshore workers and their supporters who are being violently pursued and intentionally prosecuted for exercising their free speech and associational rights,” said ILWU International President Bob McEllrath. “Longshore workers and their supporters are no longer free to move about their hometown without fear of being ambushed in front of children and families by an overzealous, out-of-control Police Chief and Sheriff. This blatant abuse of authority has to stop.”
The lawsuit was filed in United States District Court Western District of Washington on September 22, 2011. The lawsuit is aimed at stopping a law enforcement campaign against union members and supporters that includes:
- arresting and jailing members for non-violent misdemeanor citations that ordinarily do not merit arrest let alone jail;
- acting with aggression, brutality and force when arresting members for non-violent misdemeanors without probable cause for such force and without having a reasonable suspicion that the members or supporters posed an immediate or credible threat or injury to law enforcement or any other person;
- refusing to arrest members when they voluntarily presented themselves for arrest and instead insisting on arresting them in surprise visits to their homes or in “made-for-television” style scenes;
- engaging in almost constant open and obvious surveillance of the ILWU Local 21 union hall;
- following and roughing up individuals wearing clothes bearing the ILWU name or logo and/or driving vehicles marked with the ILWU name or logo;
- shining bright lights into union members’ homes for hours at a time late at night; and
- following and conducting surveillance of union members and officials in their homes.
Leal Sundet, ILWU Coast Committeeman said, “Local union officers have tried for weeks to engage law enforcement and the Port of Longview to coordinate peaceful picketing and targeted acts of lawful and constitutionally protected public demonstrations and civil disobedience in an isolated rural area on public port property. These efforts have been rebuffed with law enforcement choosing instead to impose its own brutal campaign of retaliation and excessive force on the union and its supporters.”
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union represents 50,000 men and women on the docks, in grain terminals and in other industries inWashington, Oregon, California, Alaska and Hawaii. Union longshoremen have worked in all Northwest grain terminals for the past 80 years and recently reached a new tentative collective bargaining agreement with the region’s grain export terminals after just three days of negotiations.
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