Ferguson Protesters Win Temporary Restraining Order Against Police Use of Tear Gas

St. Louis protesters won a small victory on Thursday, after a federal judge reviewing their complaint against excessive use of force by police issued a temporary restraint on officers, prohibiting them from firing tear gas without first giving fair warning and time to leave, and without first declaring the protest an unlawful assembly.

A coalition of St. Louis area police departments have fired tear gas against crowds of mostly peaceful protesters dozens of times since the August 9 killing of Michael Brown. The use of tear gas, in particular, drew condemnation from a number of observers and was cited in an Amnesty International report accusing St. Louis police of human rights abuses.

Often, the tear gas was fired with no warning or without giving protesters the time or space to leave the targeted area. And while police regularly declared a protest "unlawful," announcing the decision over loudspeakers, they sometimes fired teargas without such warning.

Dozens of protesters, as well as residents, children, legal observers, and members of the media, including VICE News, were regularly tear gassed that way.

Thursday's injunction followed a lawsuit filed by a diverse group of six plaintiffs — including young protesters, a legal observer, and a St. Louis business owner — representing the diversity of people caught within the police's harsh response to the protests. The group alleged that the multi-department police force that responded to the protests — which is known in St. Louis as the Unified Command — "knowingly used tear gas and other chemical agents against demonstrators including Plaintiffs in a manner designed to inflict pain and anguish rather than accomplishing any legitimate law enforcement objective," according to the claim.

Yes, tear gas being used in Ferguson is banned in warfare — but not in war zones. Read more here.

"Children and elderly people were among the crowds when the police launched tear gas upon them without warning and often with no clear means of egress," the lawsuit also alleged, accusing police of labeling gatherings "as unlawful assemblies, boxed in demonstrators without ample means of exit, failed to wear visible identification and failed to provide ample notice or opportunity to exit before administering chemical agents upon crowds, administered chemical agents at peaceful demonstrators, and administered chemical agents in ways targeted and designed as punishment."

US Federal Judge Carol Jackson called an emergency hearing in response to the suit, and after nine hours of testimonies ordered police to warn crowds of impending use of tear gas and provide "reasonable" time for people to disperse first, though she left the definition of what's reasonable up to police.

"There was no distinction drawn in the way peaceful protesters were treated and the way criminals were treated, even though the police do make those distinctions in other situations," she said, according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch. "People involved in peaceful, nonviolent political speech can do that without being lumped in with the criminals."

Lawyers for the plaintiff hailed the injunction as a big win for protesters.

"Ultimately she decided there was substantial evidence that police had violated the constitutional rights of the protesters, that it was a restriction on their free speech," Brendan Roediger, one of the lead attorney's on the case, told MSNBC after the ruling.

"The best thing the judge said and she said it a couple of times, was that 'it's clear to me for some reason the police are treating this group, around this movement, differently than they treat other large crowds,'" he added. "Hopefully it'll put an end to the practice of protesters having no idea what the police response will be. No more of this sort of punishment in the streets where what the police are going to do is unpredictable and often violent."

At the hearing, police defended their actions, which they said were necessary to protect properties and lives. They also said that in some occasions, including the night of the grand jury announcement, police did give instructions about where protesters should move to before using tear gas, although some said those exit routes were blocked by other officers — a dynamic VICE News witnessed first-hand on several occasions.

The St. Louis County Police Department — one of three departments cited in the lawsuit — referred all questions to the St. Louis County Counsel's Office, which did not immediately respond to VICE News' questions about the injunction, or about questions regarding the number of times police fired tear gas during the protests.

Raw coverage from the streets of Ferguson. Watch the VICE News report here.

But deputy county counselor Bob Grant told MSNBC that, "as far as St. Louis County is concerned we dispute the allegations that are in the petition."

"We believe that any actions that the county police took were consistent with our policies and did not constitute any excessive force or unauthorized use of any weaponry," he said.

The lawsuit was one of several against police filed in the weeks and months following Brown's death. In October, a federal judge had struck down the so called "five second rule" widely used by police, after a petition by the Missouri chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union claimed it violated protesters' right to free speech and due process.

Forcing peaceful protesters to move every five minutes or be arrested, that judged ruled, violated their constitutional rights.

"What they're doing is punishing people for being out protesting," Thomas Harvey, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys, said at the hearing."It's having a chilling effect on their First and Fourth Amendment rights.

"We're not asking for crazy things here," he added. "Wear your ID. If you're going to make your announcement to disperse, give people the right, a place, a way that they can comply with that order, and if you're going to declare something an unlawful assembly, follow the statute."

Follow Alice Speri on Twitter:@alicesperi