NYC Police Action Gets Out of Hand


Outgunned, Outmatched
AlterNet.org

The NYPD protester strategy on Tuesday was akin to the U.S. military's display of overwhelming and sometimes unnecessary force in Iraq

Tuesday, August 31 – The day protesters had designated as "direct action" day certainly lived up to its billing, but not as they had planned. As the second day of Republican convention speeches dragged on a few blocks away at Madison Square Garden, an extremely aggressive New York Police Department pre-empted protest actions, trapped marchers in no-escape cul de sacs, and surrounded groups and individuals in orange netting as though they were capturing schools of fish. Police arrested hundreds (the New York Times reports at least 900), perhaps more than 1,000. Most of the arrested were young people who were merely exercizing their right to free and peaceful assembly.

Early police skirmishes broke out on the steps of the Public Library at 42nd street and 5th Avenue at around 5:45 PM. This spread to Herald Square in front of Macy's, to Union Square and to areas around Madison Square Park near 26th Street and Park Avenue. In some cases, cops arrested large numbers, while in other cases they kept protestors hemmed in, immobile, for hours. Sometimes dispersal warnings were given; often the police didn't bother before pulling out the handcuffs.

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Protesters Play Hardball
AlterNet.org

Arrests, agent provocateurs, and a wide mix of protesting hit New York's Herald Square

The protests had been fairly peaceful, and the police had been fairly... fair. That all changed at an ad hoc protest on Tuesday evening in the busy shopping district around Herald Square in Manhattan, where dozens of arrests involved, at times, the unnecessary use of force. It began with just a handful of protesters shouting at an outdoor taping of MSNBC’s Hardball in the square at around 6:30 pm.

According to witnesses, police began to fence off every street corner in a three block radius worried that these MSNBC hecklers and others would focus their attacks on a group of RNC delegates en route to the convention. This created paths that only delegates were permitted to use. The arrests and senseless shows of force started when protesters got stuck behind the netting.

According to Al Bond, a 43-year old professor from Oregon, two girls jumped the police fence to cross the street. Bond said, "Police caught up and tackled them to the pavement. One girl was so small, and she fell face first against the pavement. She must have broken her jaw. The cops didn’t have to do that."

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