L.I. Honor Student Sues Over RNC Arrest
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A Long Island honor student filed a federal lawsuit yesterday claiming a New York City police detective falsely arrested him during last summer’s Republican National Convention, his attorney said.
Benjamin Traslavina, 17, a senior at Malverne High School, claims in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that he was falsely arrested by Detective Joseph Sikorski on September 1, 2004, while attending the convention at Madison Square Garden.
Mr. Traslavina’s lawyer, Daniel Perez, said the teenager was an accredited member of a group called the Junior Statesman Foundation Symposium, and was representing the group during the RNC’s “youth day” activities.
During an address by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, members of the AIDS activist group Act Up staged a protest on the convention floor, Mr. Perez said. Mr. Traslavina, a vice president of his school’s Honor Society and editor of the school newspaper, began taking photographs of the skirmish between Act Up members and security personnel when he was “whisked away by a Secret Service agent,” Mr. Perez said.
Despite protests to authorities by Act Up members and an adult leader of the Junior Statesman Foundation Symposium that Mr. Traslavina was not part of the demonstration, he was taken into custody and eventually arraigned on charges of felony riot, his lawyer said. He was held in custody for a total of 28 hours before being released on his own recognizance, Mr. Perez said.
In December, the Manhattan district attorney’s office filed a motion to dismiss the charges against the teenager.
“Although he was debriefed by the police department’s Intelligence Division, they weren’t very smart,” Mr. Perez said of his client. “This is a high school kid who had the proper credentials. This is an honors student, not a member of Act Up.”
Mr. Traslavina said in a telephone interview that the ordeal has not soured him on politics. “It’s kind of frustrating that for the rest of my life I’m going have to explain that I was arrested. It affects so many facets of your life and it’s always going to be a stigma,” he said.
Detective Sikorski said he didn’t recall the incident and declined to comment on the lawsuit.
