FISHER Poster girl for police brutality?
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AT 5-FOOT-4, and weighing in at 130 pounds, Carol
Fisher doesn’t seem like the kind of person who assaults police officers.
She has a calm and polite manner. She works as an executive assistant. She
volunteers at Revolution Books.
Cleveland Heights police, however,
are awaiting her grand jury indictment on two counts of felonious assault.
They allege that she swung her fists at two officers who were in the process
of arresting her Saturday afternoon.
Fisher had been hanging green posters
urging that President George W. Bush step down from office, and promoting
events associated with the State of the Union address and a rally in Washington,
D.C. Saturday. She says she was using a staple gun to hang posters on wooden
phone poles when a policeman shouted from across the street that she would
face a $100 fine for doing that. Cleveland Heights has an ordinance prohibiting
the hanging of posters and flyers on public property.
‘He told me to stop, and I stopped,’
Fisher says. ‘And I walked away. Then he told me to take the poster down or
be fined.’
But when she went to take the poster
down, she says, the officer threw her against a store window and proceeded
to handcuff her. Four officers eventually responded.
‘I was thrown down with my face
to the concrete,’ she says. ‘He was on top with his knee in my back. They
shackled my legs. He specifically said to me, âI’m sick and tired of this
anti-Bush shit.’ They were threatening âShut up or I’ll kill you. You’re definitely
going to the psych ward.”
Fisher says she was not permitted
to make a phone call, but while she was being taken to University Hospital,
a paramedic made a call on her behalf. Word of her arrest spread and about
a dozen supporters of World Can’t Wait and Revolution books assembled in the
waiting room. Cheryl Lessin ( to whom Fisher gave medical power of attorney
during a bout with cancer a few years ago ( was among those who answered the
call, but the hospital did not have any documents on file regarding the legal
relationship, and so neither Lessin nor other supporters were allowed to see
Fisher. Fisher says she was held in police custody at the hospital and not
allowed to make a phone call until she was released, after about six hours.
Fisher has obvious bruises on her
wrists and a scabbed wound on her chin. The injury to her jaw is made potentially
more complicated by osteoradionecrosis, a condition she says resulted from
her radiation treatments.
Cleveland Heights Police Captain
Michael Cannon wouldn’t comment on the record before the grand jury indictment
was issued, but the police narration of the events includes the allegation
that the 53-year-old woman took a swing at the officers.
Cannon read
statements from four witnesses who say that as Fisher turned to walk away
from the officers ( apparently to comply with the order to take down the poster
she’d just hung ( an officer attempted to restrain her. She swung her arm
to get loose, then began throwing fists, kicking and biting as the officer
and backups wrestled her to the ground.
‘I’m sure they’re getting their
story together,’ Fisher says, who’s also gathering witnesses.
Because the grand jury won’t handle
the misdemeanor poster-hanging, the police allegations don’t have anything
to do with Fisher’s original crime.
As word of her story spread, Fisher
began to get calls from lawyers. She says she’s considering a police brutality
suit, and also plans to bring her complaint to the Cleveland Heights City
Council meeting Monday.
The posters Fisher was hanging
include information about World Can’t Wait trip to Washington for a march
at the White House this weekend, calling for the president to step down. World
Can’t Wait calls the Bush regime ‘immoral, dangerous, and criminally indictable.’
The Cleveland chapter of World Can’t Wait has organized buses to leave Cleveland
State University Friday night, returning early Sunday. Bus tickets cost $45.
For information, call 216.633.6200.
(
Michael Gill
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