St. Louis Post Dispatch, May 17, 1998

[Headline] No Arrests As Protest Continues
By Victor VoIland and William C. Lhotka Of the Post-Dispatch Staff

PHOTO by Jerry Naunheim Jr./Post Dispatch: Three people in wheelchairs sit in a line facing away from the camera and toward a line of men standing and facing those in wheelchairs. Behind the men standing is an ornate stone building. On the back of one of the wheelchairs is a poster that reads "Lifts = Buses For All."
caption: Members of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit facing a line of plainclothes police officers Monday in front of the Omni International Hotel at Union Station.

About 50 protesters, half of them in wheelchairs, continued a peaceful demonstration at Union Station on Monday against a public transportation association meeting inside. No one was arrested.

Meanwhile, 11 of 41 demonstrators arrested on Sunday filed a $2.5 million suit late Monday against the city and three police officers. The suit accuses officials at the City Workhouse of taking blood from those arrested against their objections. It also charges police with violating the protesters' right of free speech by refusing to allow them to talk to the press while they were in jail.

The demonstrators, who belong to a group called American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT), are protesting the policies of the American Public Transit Association, which is holding a regional conference at the Omni Hotel at Union Station. The conference opened Saturday and continues through Wednesday.

The ADAPT group wants the association of bus and train operators to adopt a national policy in support of equipping all public buses with wheelchair lifts. It has demonstrated against the association at its meetings for the last several years.

Charges against 38 of the 41 arrested were dismissed Monday by Associate Circuit Judge Henry E. Autrey because authorities had failed to get warrants within the 20-hour period following arrest, as required by law.

Three protesters were released on their own recognizance and ordered to appear Wednesday in the court of Judge Thomas C. Grady. They are charged in warrants with trespassing and disturbing the peace, both misdemeanors.

George Kinsey, commissioner of adult correctional services, said it was standard procedure to take blood and perform tests on all prisoners entering the City Jail or Workhouse to screen for venereal diseases, tuberculosis and other communicable diseases.

On Monday morning, remnants of the 150-member ADAPT group wheeled down Market Street from their rooms at the Holiday Inn Downtown to Union Station and the Omni and were met with a phalanx of uniformed and plainclothes police outside the main hotel entrance. Workers erected a makeshift barrier of concrete pylons and orange plastic fencing to separate the police line from the wheelchair protesters who drew up opposite.

"I want Mr. Gilstrap to know he's got an angry parent out here and that I want the same human dignity afforded to my daughter that is given to an able-bodied person," one of the protesters, Cynthia Keelan of Phoenix, Ariz., barked through a battery-powered bullhorn. She was pushing her daughter, Jennifer, 7, who is crippled from congenital cerebral palsy. The girl is segregated and treated as a second-class citizen because she must use a wheelchair, her mother charged.

Jack R. Gilstrap, executive vice president of the American Public Transit Association, declined to meet Monday with the protesters, who repeatedly chanted his name.

Gilstrap told a reporter later that the association supported the idea of accessible public transportation for the elderly and handicapped. Implementing such access is difficult because President Ronald Reagan's administration has slashed the federal transit program by 47 percent since 1981, he said. He added that paratransit vans and buses — so-called dial-a-ride vehicles — are used much more frequently and are more cost efficient than buses equipped with wheelchair lifts.

Gilstrap said that the Bi-State bus system in St. Louis offered both the dial-a-ride vans and lift-equipped buses. Tom Sturgess, a Bi-State spokesman, told the protesters that the system would have two-thirds of its buses equipped with lifts by next year.

Lonnie Smith of Denver, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, said he was one of the first people to be subjected to a blood test at the city Workhouse after his arrest on Sunday.

Showing a reporter the puncture on the inside of his left arm where the needle had been inserted, Smith said he had been told that he had no choice — that he would be held down unless he submitted to the blood test.

end of article

Created on

Thursday 11 July 2013

Posted on

Wednesday 20 December 2017

Tags

access policy, ADAPT - American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit, APTA - American Public Transit Association, barrier, Bi-State Development Agency, blood, blood test, charges dismissed, City Workhouse (jail), cost, Cynthia Keelan, demonstration, dial-a-ride, Jack Gilstrap, Jennifer Keelan, lawsuit, lifts on all NEW buses, Lonnie Smith, Omni Hotel, President Reagan, regional convention, segregation

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