According to news items posted here, these lawyers did not file a formal complaint, they merely walked up to officers, flashed their DOJ Ids, and started ordering arrests.
The local police were CLEARLY not using their own judgement, and even let the DOJ lawyers cow them into making arrests by citing reading from the Bible as hate speach. (while totally ignoring the fact that the DOJ lawyers were engated in a hate crime themselves).
Visit http://www.lifeandlibertyministries.com to hear an interveiw with Bob Knight of Concerned Women for America.
He speaks about the situation involving the Philadelphia Christians.
The DOJ guys seem to have made a false verbal accusation to the police officers on scene. The police used that as the basis for the arrests and more than likely included those reports in their own reports they filed.
The reports the officers filed should name witnesses and what those witnesses reported to them.
If it is as you say, and I have no reason not to beleive your recitation of the facts, then the DOJ guys should still be in hot water. If they lied and video proves they did, then they still bore false witness. I still think it's actionable.
I don't agree with 'hate crime's laws. I don't defend the arrests that were made. I'm just not convinced the officers were the root of the problem.
IMO, the DOJ representatives themselves, should be prosecuted under some civil rights code violation. As government employees, it seems on the surface that they abused their position at the DOJ. They lied to get the Christian group arrested. They lied so that prosecution could go forward.
While I don't like the hate crimes statutes, if a police officer is presented with a reasonable accusation that a felony has occurred, I don't they have much choice but to act on it. Otherwise they'd be in violation of enforcing the law.
The bogus hate crimes categories should be struck down. And those DOJ guys should be swatted like flies.