LOS ANGELES _ Los Angeles officials agreed Thursday to drop all criminal charges against one of the city's most visible Black Lives Matter organizers as part of a negotiated arrangement, after hundreds of activists filed petitions, filled courtrooms and led rallies in recent weeks accusing prosecutors and police of using the charges to silence a critical voice.
Melina Abdullah, a California State University, Los Angeles professor who often speaks out against Los Angeles Police Department policies, was facing charges of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest, as well as multiple counts of disturbing a public meeting and unlawful assembly in connection with incidents that took place during the often-contentious gatherings of the city's civilian Police Commission in 2017 and 2018.
But on Thursday morning, Abdullah's attorney, Carl E. Douglas, announced a deal in court that could result in the dismissal of all charges by August and alter some rules governing Police Commission meetings. Under the terms of the agreement, he said, LAPD officers must now give verbal warnings to people accused of disrupting commission meetings, and then escort them out of the meeting if they continue to violate those rules.
Arrests will only be made if a person continues to refuse a police officer's orders outside of the meeting, Douglas said. He said the rules are comparable to those enforced at Los Angeles City Council meetings.
"We have changed the culture in Los Angeles as it deals with protest," he said. "No longer will black protest be criminalized. Because the rules that have now been set in place are very important for anyone who may want to protest at the Police Commission."
Spokespersons for the city attorney's office and the LAPD did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the deal, and a copy of the agreement was not immediately available to review. Police Commission President Steve Soboroff, a frequent target of Abdullah's barbs, did not respond to a call seeking comment.
Abdullah was originally arrested during a May 2018 commission meeting that ended when Sheila Hines-Brim _ whose niece, Wakeisha Wilson, died while in LAPD custody in 2016 _ threw a powdery substance at then-Police Chief Charlie Beck. Some activists had claimed Hines-Brim threw her niece's ashes at Beck.
Police accused Abdullah of assault after she allegedly grabbed an officer's arm during the commotion. But when the Los Angeles city attorney's office filed charges against Abdullah last August, prosecutors also accused her of four counts of unlawful assembly, one count of disturbing a public meeting and one count of interfering with a public meeting in connection with alleged misconduct that took place at commission meetings in July and August of 2017, records show.
In court filings, prosecutors said they began conducting a review of "all disruptions occurring at the Police Commission meetings," which led to the additional charges against Abdullah. A spokesman for the city attorney's office did not immediately respond to questions about what spurred the review.
Josh Rubenstein, the LAPD's chief spokesman, said the department only presented a case to the city attorney's office regarding the alleged assault at the May 2018 meeting.
Abdullah and others have accused the city of bringing charges for the sole purpose of quashing her activism, which often includes antagonistic encounters at Police Commission meetings.
"The conduct of the City Attorneys' office and LAPD _ particularly the timing _ allows the strong inference that this prosecution is in retaliation for Dr. Abdullah's other political activity and is improperly motivated," Douglas, wrote in a recent court filing. "These charges seek to criminalize Black protests and attempts to silence a loud, often angry, voice."
Calls for City Attorney Mike Feuer to drop all charges against Abdullah have circulated online for weeks. Protesters held a demonstration outside City Hall earlier this week before hand delivering a petition signed by 11,000 people calling on Feuer to dismiss the case.
Both the city attorney's office and the LAPD denied that Abdullah was targeted for political reasons.
"The People do not wish to affect the content of the defendant's public comments, or prevent her from attending public meetings. These are her rights," Rob Wilcox, a spokesman for the city attorney's office, said in a statement earlier this year.
After the hearing Thursday morning, Abdullah and Douglas stood outside before a crowd of dozens of supporters who had packed the downtown courtroom, and credited them with helping pressure the city attorney's office into what they termed a "surrender."
"How many of y'all called Mike Feuer every single day?" Abdullah shouted to cheers. "This is not the city attorney's office coming after Melina Abdullah. This was the city attorney's office coming after black protest."
Hines-Brim settled her case last month, the city attorney's office previously said. She entered into an 18-month diversionary program, and the charges will be dismissed upon completion of the terms of that agreement, Wilcox said.
The LAPD has in the past faced criticism for allegedly using the threat of arrest or prosecution to quell protest and dissenting voices.
In the nights following President Donald Trump's 2016 election, thousands of people took to downtown streets as part of a wave of national protests. The LAPD arrested 462 people that week, far more than any other city in the U.S., but only managed to bring criminal charges against three of those people.
At the time, observers accused police of giving inadequate dispersal orders before enacting arrests and of using handcuffs to quash the demonstrators' legal right to march.
