This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/nyregion/nyc-protests-george-floyd.html

The article has changed 19 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 3 Version 4
N.Y.C. Protesters Defy Curfew, Which Police Again Aggressively Enforce De Blasio Vows to Punish Officers Over Aggressive Policing of Protests: Live Updates
(32 minutes later)
A week has passed since protesters, upset, angry and energized by the killing in police custody of George Floyd in Minneapolis, first poured into New York City’s streets.
On Thursday, despite a citywide curfew that was aggressively enforced by police officers the night before, thousands of people were still on the streets in large gatherings in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx after 8 p.m. came. Following several days of reports of police responding with unnecessary force against peaceful protesters, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Friday that disciplinary action would soon be announced against police officers, including suspensions.
The intensity of the police crackdown appeared somewhat lesser than the night before, with fewer violent confrontations, but officers continued to surround protesters and box them in before charging aggressively at crowds to break them up. Mr. de Blasio pledged to review reports of police officers behaving inappropriately, the morning after New York City was again gripped by protests following the killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.
In the Bronx, just after the curfew began, rows of officers confined protesters from both sides, pinning them in using a tactic known as kettling, before running at the group with batons and striking several demonstrators. At least one person was taken away on a stretcher. Though most of the protests have been peaceful, the police have been accused of being heavy handed in dispersing demonstrators who remained on the streets after a city-imposed curfew began.
Around 9:15 p.m., in Brooklyn, police officers charged into a group of demonstrators in the Williamsburg neighborhood, tackling several people and making multiple arrests. “The people of the city need to see that when an officer does something wrong, it is investigated,’’ the mayor told reporters during a briefing. “If it’s found to be true that something wrong was done, there must be consequences and they must be swift.”
On a dimly lit side street there, officers stood over at least a half-dozen protesters, zipping plastic handcuffs between screams and cries for help. One man, pinned face down near the curb, said he was a member of the press. Another lay on his back, motionless and not yet cuffed, while officers leaned over him, assessing his condition. A woman who swore at officers was flung to the ground and cuffed. “That is one of the ways to restore trust and begin the process of moving us forward,” he added.
Colin Herlihy, 33, of Brooklyn, said the arrests were more violent than anything he saw on Wednesday night in Downtown Brooklyn. Officers’ tactics there have drawn scrutiny. Mr. de Blasio said that his daughter Chiara, who was arrested during the protests, told him of seeing officers without their body cameras turned on and that he was concerned over reports that the police had covered their names and badge numbers.
“There, at least the cops warned people to go home,” said Mr. Herlihy, who was bicycling in the march and taking photographs. “For this there was absolutely no instigation.” New York City has been under a curfew since Monday after a smaller numbers of protesters ransacked stores in Midtown, SoHo and businesses on Fordham Road in the Bronx.
In Manhattan, the police stopped one group of protesters on the Upper East Side that was heading south from what was a peaceful rally near Gracie Mansion and began to make arrests. New York Times reporters at the scene observed at least 10 people with their hands tied behind their backs, sitting on a curb in police custody. The curfew was moved to 8 p.m. from 11 p.m. because it had not tamped down the unrest, city officials said. The mayor and police officials said the curfew would largely be used to detain those promoting violence against the police or people looting businesses but that has not been the case.
One man who had been pinned to the ground had his neck pressed against a helmet that he repeatedly asked an officer to move. The officer eventually did, telling him to relax and using an expletive in admonishing him to stop squirming. The state attorney general is also investigating police actions during the protests.
A protest in the South Bronx had proceeded peacefully, moving from the Hub, one of the borough’s most dynamic commercial centers, south through the Mott Haven neighborhood. Mr. de Blasio has faced criticism for defending the actions of police officers. He was jeered Thursday during a memorial for Mr. Floyd in Brooklyn. But the mayor said the curfew will remain in place until Monday morning when the city is scheduled to begin the first phase of its reopening following the coronavirus outbreak because he believed it had been successful.
Hundreds of demonstrators marched down Willis Avenue chanting slogans demanding police reforms and changes to immigration policy. But police barricades blocked their route, and minutes before the 8 p.m. curfew was to take effect, the marchers headed east on 136th Street. Residents cheered them as they passed. “We’ve had three very good nights after two very bad nights,” the mayor said. “My plan is still my plan to ensure that we have peaceful dynamics over the next days.”
As the group proceeded down the street, a row of armored officers on bicycles blocked its path. The officers shouted at the protesters to move back. When 8 p.m. arrived, a second group of officers came in from behind. They played a recorded message over loudspeakers advising the group that the curfew was in effect, and that the protesters needed to leave the streets. Governor Andrew M. Cuomo said on Friday that he supported the decision of the mayor and police to keep the curfew in place despite the police’s aggressive tactics.
But the protesters were pinned in. “The situation we were in New York City was much worse, and what we have seen over the past couple of days is better,” Mr. Cuomo said.
Officers charged into the crowd and began to arrest people who had been protesting peacefully moments earlier. With no apparent provocation, officers shoved protesters onto sidewalks. Many people tried to leave, shouting that they would willingly go home. But with officers on all sides, they had no way out. Mr. de Blasio and Police Commissioner Dermot F. Shea also faced questions about reports that in the Mott Haven neighborhood in the Bronx, officers had shoved protesters onto sidewalks.
Around 8:30, officers charged in again, swinging their batons and striking protesters. Dozens of people were arrested, and then forced to sit on the street with their hands cuffed. One person was taken away on a stretcher. Mr. Shea said the police were responding to tips of outside agitators and that protesters intended to destroy property. Officers had recovered gasoline, firearms and numerous weapons, he said.
Despite the prospect of altercations with officers enforcing the curfew as happened on Wednesday night, many protesters were undeterred in their desire to march again on Thursday and urge change in the criminal-justice system. “In this particular incident, we had intervention regarding the attempt to destroy property, to injure our cops, to cause mayhem,” Mr. Shea said.
For some of them, the recent tensions had only deepened their commitment. Mr. de Blasio also said reports that essential workers and journalists, both of whom are allowed to be outside past the curfew, had been arrested were unacceptable. Video circulated of police officers arresting a delivery worker on Thursday night.
“I saw the videos and just had to come out myself and do something, anything, whatever I could,” Linda Shapford, 47, said at a memorial for Mr. Floyd that was held at Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn on Thursday. “It just wasn’t a question after what I saw from last night.” “Essential workers are essential workers, any essential worker doing their job is exempted from the curfew,” the mayor said.
Mayor Bill de Blasio and the police commissioner, Dermot F. Shea, had defended officers’ aggressive actions earlier in the day. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo also lent his support, though an aide later said he had asked the attorney general to review any possible misconduct. A group of volunteers sat around a table and several boxes on Thursday night on Baxter Street in Lower Manhattan. There, they provided those recently released from Manhattan’s central booking or detention complex, known as the “Tombs,” with supplies like hand sanitizer and shoelaces, as well as medical or legal advice.
For many of the protesters who assembled on Thursday, the officials’ defensiveness was further justification for staying in the streets and pushing for change. Hundreds of people have been arrested since protests began in New York City after clashing with the police during largely peaceful demonstrations or while looting. The majority have been detained for more than 24 hours, defense lawyers said.
“The response has been way too dramatic,” Anjali Jamin, 31, said at a rally at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. On Thursday morning, more than 380 people were still waiting to see a judge, raising concerns about the health of those held in cramped quarters for extended periods during the coronavirus crisis. They were scattered around the city in cells at Police Headquarters, local precinct houses and at the Manhattan jail.
Ms. Jamin, a medical student, marched with a group of about 60 health care workers and students from SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. At a “die-in” earlier, medical residents gave speeches and lay in silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds — the length of time that prosecutors say that Mr. Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was pinned by the neck under a Minneapolis police officer’s knee before he died. On Thursday night, as the 8 p.m. curfew approached, a young man in a T-shirt bounded out of Manhattan’s central booking with a whoop. He was jubilant as he approached the table, which was surrounded by various volunteers, including a doctor.
Shakaa Chaiban, a 20-year-old from Brooklyn, said he believed that anyone who looked at a teenager’s social media feed would come across a video showing police brutality. And the nature of the New York protests, he added, had been mischaracterized. The man, who did not wish to provide his name, accepted a cigarette and laces, and said he had been held since Monday, sleeping on and off as he waited for his name to be called.
“Mainstream media coverage doesn’t do justice to how these protests actually are,” said Mr. Chaiban, who was standing atop a planter near Barclays Center offering bags of snacks to protesters as he had for the past two days. “They’re not portraying the unity and the demands and whose responsibility the violence is.” He was asked his name by a volunteer, who also asked if the police or the F.B.I. had questioned whether he had ties to Antifa or another group. (He said no.) He worried that his girlfriend, who had come to pick him up, would suffer the consequences of being out after curfew.
Nearby, a few others who had recently been released sat on park benches.
Volunteers gathered around a similar “jail support” station near Brooklyn’s central booking in Downtown Brooklyn on Thursday night. A nurse in scrubs sat near a long table along with several others in masks.
They had arranged gauze and bandages, ibuprofen and antibiotic ointment on one end of the table, along with pots of salve and calming bath salts that had been donated.
At another table, volunteers waited to offer hungry people, who were not expected to be released from jail anytime soon, stacks of clementines and large serving dishes of food. One volunteer said most people were released between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. The group had covered their station with a blue tarp, preparing for the rain.
It was about 8:45 p.m. in Brooklyn on Wednesday, 45 minutes past the city’s curfew, when a peaceful protest march encountered a line of riot police, near Cadman Plaza.
Hundreds of demonstrators stood there for 10 minutes, chanting, arms raised, until their leaders decided to turn the group around and leave the area.
What they had not seen was that riot police had flooded the plaza behind them, engaging in a law enforcement tactic called kettling, which involves encircling protesters so that they have no way to exit from a park, city block or other public space, and then charging them and making arrests.
The kettling operations carried out by the city’s police after curfew on recent nights have become among the most unsettling symbols of the department’s use of force against peaceful protests, which has touched off a fierce backlash against Mayor Bill de Blasio and the police commissioner, Dermot F. Shea.
In the past several days, New York Times journalists covering the protests have seen officers repeatedly charge at demonstrators after curfew with seemingly little provocation, shoving them onto sidewalks, striking them with batons and using other aggressive tactics.
In an interview on WNYC on Friday, the mayor said the encircling of protesters was sometimes necessary for public safety. “I don’t want to see protesters hemmed in if they don’t need to be,” he said, but he added “that sometimes there’s a legitimate problem and it’s not visible to protesters.”
The times and locations of planned protests, rallies, vigils and marches include:
Friday
1 p.m. — Bronx: Protest at Poe Park, East 192nd Street and East Kingsbridge Road
1 p.m. — Brooklyn: Fort Greene Park
1:15 p.m. — Brooklyn: Barclays Center
2 p.m. — Brooklyn: Breonna Taylor vigil at Grand Army Plaza
2 p.m. — Yonkers: 441 Central Park Avenue, Protest for Shakeyma Alford
3 p.m. — Manhattan: Breonna Taylor vigil at 125th Street and 7th Avenue, Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard
4 p.m. — Manhattan: Washington Square Park
5 p.m. — Brooklyn: Sunset Park, Entrance on 44th Street and 6th Avenue
5:30 p.m. — Brooklyn: 472 86th Street, Outside of Century 21
5:30 p.m. — Queens: Breonna Taylor vigil at Astoria Park
5:30 p.m. — Queens: Breonna Taylor vigil at War Memorial in Astoria Park
6 p.m. — Manhattan: The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Avenue
6 p.m. — Queens: Court Square
6:30 p.m. — Queens: Breonna Taylor vigil at Queensbridge Park
7 p.m. Brooklyn: McCarren Park
Saturday
10 a.m. — Manhattan: Frederick Douglass Statue in 110th and Central Park West. Followed by a march to Washington Square Park and a 2 p.m. rally.
11 a.m. — Bronx: Van Cortlandt Park Parade Ground
1 p.m. — Manhattan: The National Black Theatre 2031 5th Avenue
1:45 p.m. — Queens: MacDonald Park on Queens Boulevard
Sunday
2 p.m. — Manhattan: Union Square
2 p.m. — Brooklyn: Restoration Plaza 1368 Fulton Street
Two Buffalo police officers were suspended without pay on Thursday night after a video showed them shoving a 75-year-old protester, who was hospitalized with a head injury as a result, the authorities said.Two Buffalo police officers were suspended without pay on Thursday night after a video showed them shoving a 75-year-old protester, who was hospitalized with a head injury as a result, the authorities said.
Byron Brown, the city’s mayor, said the man was in serious but stable condition. A video showed him motionless on the ground and bleeding from his right ear after being shoved.Byron Brown, the city’s mayor, said the man was in serious but stable condition. A video showed him motionless on the ground and bleeding from his right ear after being shoved.
Mr. Cuomo, in a statement late Thursday, condemned the officers’ actions.Mr. Cuomo, in a statement late Thursday, condemned the officers’ actions.
“The incident in Buffalo is wholly unjustified and utterly disgraceful,” Mr. Cuomo said. “I’ve spoken with City of Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown and we agree that the officers involved should be immediately suspended. Police officers must enforce — NOT ABUSE — the law.”“The incident in Buffalo is wholly unjustified and utterly disgraceful,” Mr. Cuomo said. “I’ve spoken with City of Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown and we agree that the officers involved should be immediately suspended. Police officers must enforce — NOT ABUSE — the law.”
In the video, the officer who pushed the man appeared to start to check on him but was nudged to leave by another officer. Someone could be overheard saying, “Get a medic, right now.”In the video, the officer who pushed the man appeared to start to check on him but was nudged to leave by another officer. Someone could be overheard saying, “Get a medic, right now.”
The Buffalo Police Department initially told local media that “one person was injured when he tripped and fell” and that there had been five arrests during the protest.The Buffalo Police Department initially told local media that “one person was injured when he tripped and fell” and that there had been five arrests during the protest.
Commissioner Shea, apologized on Thursday for any instances of police misconduct over the past several days.Commissioner Shea, apologized on Thursday for any instances of police misconduct over the past several days.
But during a brief news conference at Police Headquarters, he also demanded that demonstrators stop insulting and attacking his officers and he warned that anti-police rhetoric could lead to continued violence against those he oversees.But during a brief news conference at Police Headquarters, he also demanded that demonstrators stop insulting and attacking his officers and he warned that anti-police rhetoric could lead to continued violence against those he oversees.
“For there to be calm, there must also be contrition,” Commissioner Shea said. “So I am sorry. Sometimes even the best — and the N.Y.P.D. is the goddamned best police department in the country — but sometimes even the best fall down.”“For there to be calm, there must also be contrition,” Commissioner Shea said. “So I am sorry. Sometimes even the best — and the N.Y.P.D. is the goddamned best police department in the country — but sometimes even the best fall down.”
“So for our part in the damage to civility, for our part in racial bias, in excessive force, unacceptable behavior, unacceptable language and many other mistakes, we are human,” he said. “I am sorry. Are you?”“So for our part in the damage to civility, for our part in racial bias, in excessive force, unacceptable behavior, unacceptable language and many other mistakes, we are human,” he said. “I am sorry. Are you?”
The commissioner, who has condemned the killing of Mr. Floyd, said he knew of at least seven possible episodes of misconduct by New York officers in the course of the demonstrations. There would, he said, “probably be a couple of officers suspended” as a result.The commissioner, who has condemned the killing of Mr. Floyd, said he knew of at least seven possible episodes of misconduct by New York officers in the course of the demonstrations. There would, he said, “probably be a couple of officers suspended” as a result.
But he also argued that videos of some incidents that had been shared online were presented out of context and that in many cases, officers’ use of force had been “completely justified.”But he also argued that videos of some incidents that had been shared online were presented out of context and that in many cases, officers’ use of force had been “completely justified.”
Overall, he said, the vast majority of New York officers had been professional and had exercised “extreme restraint” in what he called a “riot situation.”Overall, he said, the vast majority of New York officers had been professional and had exercised “extreme restraint” in what he called a “riot situation.”
In the past several days, New York Times journalists embedded in protests have reported that officers had charged at demonstrators with seemingly little provocation, shoved them onto sidewalks, struck them with batons and used other aggressive tactics.In the past several days, New York Times journalists embedded in protests have reported that officers had charged at demonstrators with seemingly little provocation, shoved them onto sidewalks, struck them with batons and used other aggressive tactics.
In the past week, hundreds of people who have been arrested in New York City — some for suspicion of looting; others after clashing with the police amid largely peaceful protests — have been detained in cramped cells for more than 24 hours, their health at risk in the midst of a pandemic, defense lawyers said.In the past week, hundreds of people who have been arrested in New York City — some for suspicion of looting; others after clashing with the police amid largely peaceful protests — have been detained in cramped cells for more than 24 hours, their health at risk in the midst of a pandemic, defense lawyers said.
As of Thursday morning, more than 380 people who were being held either in cells at Police Headquarters, at local precincts or in a Manhattan jail had yet to appear before a judge.As of Thursday morning, more than 380 people who were being held either in cells at Police Headquarters, at local precincts or in a Manhattan jail had yet to appear before a judge.
Nearly 70 percent of them had been waiting more than 24 hours, including one defendant who had been waiting 80 hours, according to court officials and the Legal Aid Society.Nearly 70 percent of them had been waiting more than 24 hours, including one defendant who had been waiting 80 hours, according to court officials and the Legal Aid Society.
Prosecutors, the police and court officials said that they were doing what they could to process people quickly, but that they faced logistical hurdles because of the coronavirus shutdown and the unusually high number of arrests.Prosecutors, the police and court officials said that they were doing what they could to process people quickly, but that they faced logistical hurdles because of the coronavirus shutdown and the unusually high number of arrests.
Reporting was contributed by Anne Barnard, Gabriela Bhaskar, Julia Carmel, Annie Correal, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Alan Feuer, Michael Gold, Christina Goldbaum, Corey Kilgannon, Jeffery C. Mays, Terence McGinley, Andy Newman, Derek M. Norman, Azi Paybarah, Pia Peterson, Sean Piccoli, Jan Ransom, Dana Rubinstein, Eliza Shapiro, Ashley Southall, Liam Stack, Matt Stevens and Anjali Tsui. Reporting was contributed by Anne Barnard, Gabriela Bhaskar, Julia Carmel, Annie Correal, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Alan Feuer, Michael Gold, Christina Goldbaum, Melissa Guerrero, Corey Kilgannon, Jeffery C. Mays, Terence McGinley, Andy Newman, Derek M. Norman, Azi Paybarah, Pia Peterson, Sean Piccoli, Jan Ransom, Dana Rubinstein, Eliza Shapiro, Ashley Southall, Liam Stack, Matt Stevens, Katie Van Syckle and Anjali Tsui.