ACLU Official Files Claim Over May Day Arrest : Protest: Attorney’s action against the city and the Police Department says she suffered distress when officers handcuffed her at demonstration.

An American Civil Liberties Union official has filed a $250,000 claim against the City of Los Angeles, the Police Department and two police officials, saying she suffered emotional distress after being falsely arrested at a May Day demonstration, ACLU officials said Wednesday.

Carol Sobel, a senior staff attorney for the Southern California branch of the ACLU, said she was standing on Alvarado Street, just south of 7th Street, with Tracy Rice, another ACLU attorney, on May 1 when police declared a demonstration by the Revolutionary Communist Party an unlawful assembly.

She said she told a sergeant she could only identify as Sgt. Severn that “we were there as observers and asked if we could remain where we were. Had he told me to leave or I would be arrested, I would have been out of there like lightning.”

Sobel said the sergeant, identified by Rampart Division as Sgt. Ted Severn, summoned two officers and held her by the arm until they arrived and put her in handcuffs.

“I think the sergeant thought it was pretty funny,” she said. “I think I was arrested because I was from the ACLU.”

She said all of the demonstrators had been arrested before her arrest, and police were opening the street to traffic.

“At the time we asked to stay on the public sidewalk, the sergeant was opening the street again,” she said. “Television footage shows that pedestrians were being allowed back into the area while the jail bus was still there.”

Sobel’s claim, filed late Tuesday, also names Assistant Police Chief Robert Vernon and Severn. Vernon was named, she said, because she believes the order to book her came from him.

“This is a serious issue,” she said. “A 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision clearly protects what we were doing.”

Litigants seeking damages from the city must first file a claim. If that claim is not honored, a lawsuit can then be filed in Superior Court. Sobel said her claim was preparatory to filing suit.

Mike Qualls, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office, said Wednesday he could not comment on Sobel’s allegations because attorneys have not yet examined her claim. Vernon was unavailable for comment.