Silverglate, a former Massachusetts Civil Liberties Union president, has a record of pursuing cases which involve Harvard police negligence.
"The treatment he received...made it quite clear that his race was at least one of the reasons he was treated so badly," Silverglate Harvard offered to drop the charges, butSilverglate said in an interview this week that helet Ntshanga be tried and acquitted to provepublicly his client's innocence. "When [the police] realized [their mistake],they offered to dismiss, but I wanted a notguilty," Silverglate says. But while Ntshanga says he won't file a lawsuitagainst the University, the complaint raisesquestions about the Harvard Police Department'streatment of minority students, Silverglate says. The department has been repeatedly accused ofracial harassment by minority students. Mostrecently, in April 1992, the Black StudentsAssociation charged in a flyer door-droppedthroughout campus that police mistreated Blackstudents on four separate occasions. Laundry Room At the time of the arrest, Ntshanga wasemployed by HSA to pick up laundry and cleandepots. At roughly 6:30 a.m., four Harvardpolice--including Officers Peter McGaffigin,George Pierce and Sgt. Kathleen M. Stanford--heardnoise in the HSA linen office. They entered the room where, according to thepolice report, "Mr. Ntshanga [was] lying on thecounter top wearing shorts, wrapped in blanketsand speaking on the phone." Ntshanga says one officer, who he knew as"Johnny" from his job working in the policedepartment's escort service, placed his chestagainst Ntshanga's. Ntshanga and the report indicate that thestudent identified himself and explained why hewas in the room. Ntshanga says he then asked "Johnny" why theofficer was being "tough" when he knew him to be anice guy. Ntshanga says "Johnny" was then pushed away byanother police officer. "[Johnny] really hated me because I was talkingtoo much, I guess," Ntshanga says. Ntshanga could not produce his studentidentification card. But Ntshanga says hesuggested to the officers that they call his HSAmanagers. Read more in News
