Ferguson protesters lawyer up after scores of arrests

Baku. 1 December. REPORT.AZ/  The young man and woman waiting in the dark outside the St. Louis county jail were bundled up in scarves and hats to ward off a light freezing rain, but still they were shivering. Every time someone emerged from the jail they would scurry with the person to a nearby car, which had the engine running and the heat blasting.

The pair were one of several teams working in shifts to help some of the more than 100 people who were arrested during last week's sometimes violent protests in Ferguson, Missouri. Their job was to help the newly released individuals get legal aid for upcoming court appearances.

Each person received a flyer with numbers to call for lawyers and legal advice. They were also offered a ride home volunteers, who will return to the jail again on Monday after the holiday weekend, are part of a centralized team of lawyers and law school students pitching in from around the United States, informs Report citing Reuters.

They are tapping into a sophisticated network of legal experts established over the past decade in the wake of high-profile mass demonstrations, including protests at the Republican National Convention in 2004 and the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011. The network includes seasoned lawyers who routinely handle cases stemming from protests and civil disobedience, and who say they have learned from each protest.

"Occupy Wall Street is the gift that keeps on giving," said Wylie Stecklow, a New York-based lawyer. Stecklow's firm, Stecklow, Cohen & Thompson (formerly Wylie Law), represented 200 people who were arrested during the Occupy protests in New York.

He learned valuable lessons from the Occupy and RNC protests. For example, how best to centrally fund bail payouts and how to work together to represent large numbers of people.

Some of the volunteers deployed in Ferguson have acted as legal observers, who are tasked with documenting each arrest that is made at a protest and serving afterward as a witness to the events leading to charges.

But the job of the legal team working in Ferguson goes far beyond the duties of protest observers. Once people have been arrested and charged, lawyers from the same central network offer their services to each individual with a court case.