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: JAIL ORDEAL IS TREE-DICULOUS! 
: Wednesday, August 31, 2005
: By JARRETT RENSHAW AND JASON FINK
: JOURNAL STAFF WRITERS 
: A Jersey City woman arrested Monday during a protest to save the last tree on a Downtown block spent all night and most of yesterday in jail, throwing up from the food and vowing to take action over what she sees as an affront to her right to protest. 

: "It is appalling the way I was treated," said Rikki Reich, who was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct Monday after protesting the cutting down of three trees at a construction site on Christopher Columbus Drive. 

: "I'm going to take action," she said. "I'm going to approach the American Civil Liberties Union because I think my free speech was violated." 

: Police say Reich was placed under arrest after she began screaming and flailing her arms and struck an officer on his glasses. 

: Police spokesman Sgt. Edgar Martinez said Reich has an outstanding bench warrant for not showing up at court, which she acknowledged stemmed from a summons for fare evasion on the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail. 

: Though Reich - reached yesterday evening just hours after she was bailed out of jail by City Councilman Steve Fulop - concedes she was "screaming, of course" as construction workers took a chainsaw to the last of three trees cut down near the site of a future 29-story residential building, she denied striking the officer. 

: Reich's harrowing 27 hours in custody began when she was taken to the East District police station after being arrested just before 2 p.m. Monday. 

: After spending a few hours in a holding cell there, she said, she was taken to Jersey City Municipal Court, where she was processed and pleaded not guilty before a judge, who set her bail at $1,000. She was then taken to the Hudson County jail in Kearny, where, she said, she was put in a cell by herself. 

: "For a long time I was in something called the 'bullpen.' It's a holding area for incoming arrestees," she said yesterday. 

: "Then they transferred me to a cell block. It was loud, everybody bangs on the doors like caged animals. I've been throwing up non-stop for 24 hours." 

: The ordeal began when, hours into her protest Monday, Reich said she spoke with Fulop, who told her to inform on-site representatives of the Grove Pointe apartments developer, Schenkman/Kushner, not to cut down the lone remaining tree, which he believes is on city property. 

: When workers cut it down, police say, Reich tried to get around the fence surrounding the tree and started shouting and screaming; at that point, according to police, she struck the officer. 

: Reich said she was the one mistreated. 

: "They took my backpack away from me, they handcuffed me and threw me into a chain link fence," she said last night. 




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