Paper: Houston Chronicle
Date: Fri 11/17/2006
Section: B
Page: 2
Edition: 3 STAR
 

YOUR GOVERNMENT / Bush protester who sued city settles / Initial agreement is $25,000 and a promise to revisit poster ordinance

By CINDY GEORGE
Staff

The city has reached a tentative $25,000 settlement with a man who claimed that Houston police violated his free-speech rights when they arrested him as he carried a sign critical of President Bush.

The settlement also requires city attorneys to recommend that the City Council rescind an ordinance banning the carrying of posters without a parade permit - the basis of Christopher Kelly's arrest downtown two years ago.

Kelly, 44, was arrested after carrying a sign that read "No More Bush-it." He sued the city and the arresting officer, David Weaver, in federal court last year.

Houston civil rights lawyer Randall Kallinen, who represented Kelly, said the main goal was to eliminate the ordinance.

"It's used selectively against people the police decided they wanted to give a ticket to," he said.

Kelly was holding his sign, written on a piece of cardboard, while standing in the 400 block of Main among placard-toting Astros fans during the team's playoff run in October 2004.

Police took Kelly's sign, handcuffed Kelly and drove him around downtown before dropping him off where they had detained him, his lawsuit alleged. They then gave him a misdemeanor citation.

"There were a whole bunch of people downtown, and they were carrying signs that said `Go Astros' and `I love the Astros,' " said Kallinen, who worked on the case with other lawyers from the Texas Civil Rights Project.

After a municipal judge dismissed the citation, Kelly sued Weaver, as well as 10 unidentified officers and the city.

Kallinen said Kelly, who lives in southwest Houston, would not comment on the case. Kelly told the Houston Chronicle last year that he filed the lawsuit "so that I and other Houstonians can feel free to express our political views about our government without the threat of assault and arrest and bogus prosecution by the police."

Kelly Dempsey, a civil trial lawyer who represented Weaver, said she expects a final settlement next month. Robert L. Cambrice, a senior assistant city attorney, confirmed the tentative agreement.