Here’s what you need to know:
- As protesters defied the curfew, police again surrounded crowds and charged in.
- The police pinned protesters in the Bronx, then charged at them with batons.
- Despite the threat of altercations, thousands showed up, energized to demand change.
- Buffalo police officers are suspended after a video showed them shoving a 75-year-old protester.
- ‘I am sorry,’ New York City’s police commissioner said. ‘Are you?’
As protesters defied the curfew, police again surrounded crowds and charged in.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
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 police pinned protesters in the Bronx, then charged at them with batons.
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.
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.
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.
But the protesters were pinned in.
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.
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.
Despite the threat of altercations, thousands showed up, energized to demand change.
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.
For some of them, the recent tensions had only deepened their commitment.
“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.”
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.
For many of the protesters who assembled on Thursday, the officials’ defensiveness was further justification for staying in the streets and pushing for change.
“The response has been way too dramatic,” Anjali Jamin, 31, said at a rally at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn.
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.
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.
“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.”
Buffalo police officers are suspended after a video showed them shoving a 75-year-old protester.
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.
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.”
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.
‘I am sorry,’ New York City’s police commissioner said. ‘Are you?’
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.
“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?”
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.”
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.
Despite a pandemic, those arrested are being held in cramped jails.
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.
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.
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.
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N.Y.C. Protesters Defy Curfew, Which Police Again Aggressively Enforce - The New York Times
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