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MORTON COUNTY, N.D. (KFGO/AP) – A three-judge panel from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a lower court’s ruling that sided with law enforcement and dismissed a case brought by Dakota Access Pipeline demonstrators alleging excessive use of force by police at the Backwater Bridge on state Highway 1806 in 2016.
When temperatures dropped below freezing the night of Nov. 20, 2016 as police and protesters faced off just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, officers sprayed protesters with water and deployed tear gas and rubber bullets in an effort to disperse the crowd. The protestors sued Morton and Stutsman counties and their sheriffs, the city of Mandan, and a number of individual members of law enforcement, claiming that law enforcement used excessive force that night and that their constitutional rights were violated.
Lawyers for law enforcement, including Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier sought to have the protesters’ legal claims dismissed and U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor granted their request in December of 2021.
The protestors appealed Traynor’s decision to the 8th Circuit and oral arguments were heard in September. On November 3, the 8th Circuit filed its decision to affirm the dismissal, explaining that it was not clearly established that law enforcement’s use-of-force violated the protestors constitutional rights, and that there was insufficient evidence of deliberate indifference by the supervisors named in the case.
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