The NYPD Brutalized Protesters in 2020. Will It Face a Reckoning?
New York Magazine, October 7, 2022: The NYPD Brutalized Protesters in 2020. Will It Face a Reckoning?
“On June 4, 2020, hundreds of protesters marched through the Mott Haven neighborhood of the South Bronx, trailed by a large deployment of NYPD officers. About 50 cops diverted the march using a roadblock off Willis Avenue and then encircled — or ‘kettled’— people at 136th Street and Brook Avenue. The cops were joined by body-armor-wearing bicycle officers from the Strategic Response Group, the NYPD’s 700-strong squad formed in 2015 by former commissioner Bill Bratton and trained for both protest suppression and anti-terrorism patrols.
“According to a lawsuit, Julian Phillips, who was in the crowd that day, heard a recorded announcement played over a loudspeaker claiming the demonstrators were in violation of an 8 p.m. curfew, though police had blocked them from dispersing. As the clock drew closer to eight, Phillips locked eyes with an officer in a white shirt — an NYPD supervisor — who, Phillips claimed, grinned at him and pointed to his watch. Within minutes, the cops waded into the crowd with batons flailing, indiscriminately dousing the trapped demonstrators with pepper spray. Phillips saw one officer use his riot shield to slam protesters to the ground before Phillips himself was dragged down by a crush of people, then pinned and arrested by multiple cops, one of whom he says repeatedly kneed him in the head.
“In the wake of George Floyd’s murder that feverish summer, the NYPD responded to days of widespread protests with a prolonged campaign of aggression. Then–Police Commissioner Dermot Shea commended officers for doing a ‘phenomenal job,’ and Mayor Bill de Blasio backed him up, blaming any violence in the demonstrations on a ‘substantial number of out-of-towners’ — a phrase that harks back to the ‘outside agitator’ infamously invoked by southern law enforcement during the 1960s to describe civil-rights protesters. But cell-phone videos and news broadcasts showed a police force out of control — one that turned to belligerent, often violent tactics against peaceful demonstrators in places like the South Bronx and downtown Brooklyn yet failed to stop the looting of business districts in lower Manhattan and the West Bronx.
“The brutality on display two years ago is quickly receding into the historical memory. But a complex tangle of 2020-related litigation continues to wind its way through the courts with possibly enormous consequences for the NYPD’s handling of protests in the city going forward. In the future, it may not be police commanders who oversee the force’s response to demonstrations but a federal court. The intense unfolding legal battle illustrates why previous attempts have failed to transform the way cops deal with free speech and protest in New York City and the lengths to which the city will go to maintain the status quo.”
Additional reading:
The New York Times, January 14, 2021: N.Y. Attorney General Sues N.Y.P.D. Over Protests and Demands Monitor
Human Rights Watch, September 30, 2020: “Kettling” Protesters in the Bronx: Systemic Police Brutality and Its Costs in the United States
