NYPD trapped 300 George Floyd protesters in the Bronx and waited until
after curfew to ‘assault and arrest’ them: report
ByROCCO PARASCANDOLA
<https://www.nydailynews.com/rocco-parascandola-staff.html#nt=byline>
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS|
SEP 30, 2020AT11:13 AM
<mailto:?subject=NYPD%20trapped%20300%20George%20Floyd%20protesters%20in%20the%20Bronx%20and%20waited%20until%20after%20curfew%20to%20%E2%80%98assault%20and%20arrest%E2%80%99%20them%3A%20report&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nydailynews.com%2Fnew-york%2Fnyc-crime%2Fny-nypd-trapped-george-floyd-protesters-human-rights-watch-20200930-v3bww4lunvfezi5bb2efmiltma-story.html>
Police look on as demonstrators defy an 8pm curfew to march on Atlantic
Avenue in Brooklyn, New York City on June 4, 2020.
Police look on as demonstrators defy an 8pm curfew to march on Atlantic
Avenue in Brooklyn, New York City on June 4, 2020.(Gardiner Anderson/for
New York Daily News)
The NYPD trapped roughly 300 protesters in the Bronx marching for George
Floyd and waited until the 8 p.m. citywide curfew to arrest them for
breaking the law, a human rights group wrote in a scathing report
released Wednesday.
Human Rights Watch said Bronx police officers on June 4 surrounded
protesters in a tactic known as kettling, refused to get them disperse,
then began “whaling their batons, beating people from car tops, shoving
them down to the ground and firing pepper spray in their faces” as soon
as the curfew hit.
The 8 p.m. shutdown was imposed a few days earlier to stem widespread
looting amid marches against the death of George Floyd, who died in
Minneapolis police custody.
“As protesters cried out — some with blood dripping down their faces —
the police began to arrest them. They forced people to sit on the street
with their hands zip-tied behind their backs, at times so tight that
their hands went numb,” said Human Rights Watch in their report.
The organization questioned 81 protesters and reviewed 81 videos and
police scanner calls for the report. They also released a 12-minute
video filled with diagrams of the Mott Haven clash, interviews with
witnesses and protesters, and cellphone videos taken at the scene.
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea and Mayor Bill de Blasio defended the
NYPD’s plan a day after the arrests, with Shea saying it was “executed
nearly flawlessly.”
He claimed that the same people who organized the Mott Haven rally were
behind violent protests earlier in the year, and cops recovered weapons,
guns and gasoline at the scene.
But cops later admitted that no gasoline was ever found, and the gun
arrested happened three hours before the protest, about half a mile away.
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In response to the Human Rights Watch report, the NYPD said it was
reviewing its tactics.
“The NYPD has conducted an ongoing review of the department’s response
to protests and riots,” the NYPD said in a statement. “Enhanced training
and techniques have already been put in place.”
Arrested protesters were issued summonses, but Bronx District Attorney
Darcel Clark later said the tickets would be dismissed. More than 100
protesters have since filed notice of claims against the city and plan
to sue.
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Lawyer Jeff Emdin, who represents 20 protesters, said the NYPD was
hellbent that day on “punishing people for exercising their right to
protest.”
The Human Rights Watch report also noted that the mayor’s office and the
NYPD did not seem to be on the same page about who would be exempt when
the curfew first took hold on June 1.
One City Hall staffer confirmed that those "who are doing jail, legal
and medical support for arrested protestors” would be exempt from the
curfew. But the NYPD arrested some of those “legal observers” during the
June 4 chaos, according to the report.
The NYPD’s top lawyer, Legal Matters Deputy Commissioner Earnest Hart,
later wrote in a Sept. 16 letter to Human Rights Watch Acting Crisis and
Conflict Director Ida Sawyer that legal observers had no such exemption.
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Sawyer, who helped write the Wednesday report, said she was shocked by
the police tactics she saw in cellphone videos.
“It was very jarring to see this, and I’ve spent many years in Congo and
central Africa documenting crackdowns on protesters," she said. “This
wasn’t on that scale, this was clearly a violation of human rights law.”
Rocco Parascandola
<https://www.nydailynews.com/rocco-parascandola-staff.html#nt=author-bio>Police
Bureau Chief
CONTACT
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rocco Parascandola covers the NYPD and criminal justice issues for the
New York Daily News, where he has been Police Bureau Chief since 2009.
He has won various journalism awards in his 32-year career, which
includes stints at New York Newsday and the New York Post. He is the
author of "Gunz and God: The Life of an NYPD Undercover."
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