Calvert County still prosecuting anti-LNG export activist for reporting police brutality
Earlier this year, Carling Sothoron and Heather Doyle climbed and hung a banner from a crane at the construction site for Dominion Resources's fracked gas export facility near Cove Point, Maryland. During the extraction and arrest, both Carling and Heather, who are expert climbers, experienced an unsafe extraction by the Calvert County Sheriff's Office and Heather was assaulted during her arrest. After the court proceedings for their action Heather filed an official complaint about their treatment. Instead of holding its officers accountable, Calvert County is now prosecuting Heather for “making false statements to an officer”.
This is a blatant attempt to intimidate and silence us for speaking out against Dominion.
Carling and Heather took action to support people living in Cove Point, along the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay in southern Maryland, Piscataway territory. Carling and Heather wanted to draw attention to the issues of dangerous LNG export terminals being built in Cove Point, potential hydraulic fracturing in Western Maryland, and the likely catastrophic and chronic health effects of this facility on the community.
These new charges are a part of a larger pattern of intimidation and excessive force against people protesting Dominion's plans for Cove Point. The Calvert County Sheriff's Office is being paid by Dominion to act as a private security force and to suppress opposition of the project within Calvert County(1). Some of their tactics include extremely long probationary periods and harassment including suspicious vehicle searches. The Calvert County Sheriffs in their official duties and as contracted security officers for the corporation, are doing Dominion's dirty work.
Carling and Heather acknowledge that the police violence they experienced was a direct result of intentional political protest and understand that their experience with the criminal justice system does not reflect how Black, Brown, and poor folks are treated by the justice system in Calvert County and throughout the US. But while the people of Maryland and the nation watch the trial of the officers who murdered Freddie Gray, Calvert County is showing that in so many places official forms of police accountability are a sham.
Stand up to these ugly tactics designed to distract and exhaust us.
(1) http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31230-when-police-harass-cove-point-p...
