The activist who climbed the Statue of Liberty on July 4, 2018, shutting down the popular tourist site on one of the busiest days of the year, was sentenced to probation and community service on March 19.
Patricia “Therese” Okoumou, 45, entered the Manhattan courtroom with tape on her face, claiming her right of freedom of expression was being limited, along with a white headband scrawled with the words “I care!”
Judge Gabriel Gorenstein ordered Okoumou to remove the tape in the courtroom, which she did, reported WABC.
Prior to the sentencing, she spoke and claimed she did not deserve prison time despite clearly violating the law. “I do not need probation, and I do not belong in prison,” Okoumou told the judge. “I am not a criminal.”
Gorenstein sentenced her to five years of probation and 200 hours of community service. Federal prosecutors had asked for 30 days in prison and three years of probation.
Okoumou, an immigrant from Congo, had said that she climbed the statue to protest the treatment of illegal immigrants at the southern border.
Law enforcement officials had to climb to where she was and said it was a dangerous situation that could have ended with someone being injured or killed, but Okoumou’s lawyers said it wasn’t dangerous and that any jail time would prevent Okoumou from getting a job.
Gorenstein went with the activist to the statue in late February to see where Okoumou climbed. Park Police Lt. Chris Kyriakou explained where Okoumou was located, about 24 feet above the ground, when officers had to rescue her.
“It was difficult to see her because of the angling,” Kyriakou said according to a recording of the visit obtained by the New York Post. “We were able to talk when she would lean forward which was also the point when it became dangerous … dangerous for her and for anyone below.”
“There was nowhere to move,” Kyriakou recalled.
Okoumou was found guilty on Dec. 17.
“The defendant staged a dangerous stunt that alarmed the public and endangered her own life and the lives of the NYPD officers who responded to the scene,” said U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, in a statement announcing the charges. “While we must and do respect the rights of the people to peaceable protest, that right does not extend to breaking the law in ways that put others at risk,” Berman said.
Detective Brian Glacken of the NYPD’s elite emergency services unit, who helped apprehend Okoumou, said that reaching her was perilous.
The rescue was “difficult due to the fact that there were not a lot of places to hold on to or hang on to,” he told the judge, reported the New York Post.
While ropes held him and a colleague, he believes they likely wouldn’t have held if they had fallen. “With my weight, it’d probably snap and slow me down for a second before hitting the ground,” he told the judge.
During the December hearing, Gorenstein said that he couldn’t give Okoumou a pass for her crimes just because she claimed to be committing them as an act of protest.
He cited Sir Thomas More’s discussion in “A Man for All Seasons” about breaking laws to get to the devil, reported the New York Post. “And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you—where would you hide?” the famous Catholic adviser to King Henry VIII said in the film.
“I think the defendant’s lawyers know that if I took them up on that invitation, none of us is protected by the law,” the judge said.
