Stanford Paper May Sue To Prevent Police Raids

The Stanford Daily - Stanford's student newspaper - is currently considering legal action against the Palo Alto Police Department to prevent a recurrence of a raid on the Daily's offices Monday by police seeking photographs to use as evidence against a group of demonstrators.

The police were armed with a search warrant empowering them to seize photographs, negatives, and undeveloped film that might be used as evidence against demonstrators who fought with police the previous Friday at the Stanford University Medical Center.

Four policemen searched the Daily's office for 45 minutes Monday evening.

"They didn't turn things inside out, but they did look at everything, and they saw a lot of stuff that had nothing to do with what they were looking for," Felicity Barringer, editor-in-chief of the Daily, said yesterday. Barringer said the police searched darkrooms, mailboxes, files, desks and wastebaskets during the search. Police did not seize any film, and said later that they had taken nothing from the office.

Palo Alto Police Chief James Zurcher said after the raid that he had ordered the action because the Daily had a policy of "destroying evidence to protect criminals." Barringer said yesterday that this was a "complete misrepresentation" of the Daily's policy.

"Our policy is that we will print anything that's newsworthy, but that afterward we will destroy anything thatcould be used in court - on either side - because we have no protection against subpoenas," she added.

In an editorial published Tuesday, the Daily called the raid a "fishing expedition." "The use of searches, subpoenas, and all other forms of governmental harassment obviously have a chilling effect on the freedom of the media to exercise the rights guaranteed them by the First Amendment," the editorial said.

The Daily is now planning a legal challenge to the Palo Alto police - and one of the lawyers working with them is Anthony Amsterdam, a civil liberties lawyer who was one of the attorneys defending Earl Caldwell, a reporter for the New York Times, in his successful fight to keep notes on his interviews with members of the Black Panther Party out of the hands of a Federal Grand Jury.

Stanford President Richard W. Lyman called the raid "deplorable and threatening to full freedom of the press." The Stanford administration is helping the Daily gather contributions to defray the cost of its suit, Barringer said.

Demo

The demonstrators had been arrested after an all-night sit-in at the Medical Center led by the Stanford Black Students Union and the Black United Front. Stanford administrators summoned police to evict a group of 50 demonstrators - who were demanding that Sam Bridges, a black janitor at the hospital, be rehired - from a hallway where they had spent the night.

Police arrived while negotiations to end the sit-in were underway, and the demonstrators barricaded themselves behind two glass doors.

The protesters repelled two police charges on the barricade with firehouses. When police broke the door off its hinges, the demonstrators charged through another door, some swinging clubs made from chairs at police on guard.

The Daily published an extra last Sunday which included pictures of the injured after the demonstrators' charge, which police said led them to believe the newspaper might have photographs which would be useful as evidence.