Apr 02 2007
Proving Once Again that the NYPD are Scumbags
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I’ve never had a good “run-in” with the NYPD. I’ve always been polite. I’ve always been cordial. I never complain, and I never make waves, and yet for some reason I’ve still never had a good experience with the NYPD.
That being said, here’s an interesting story from Gothamist…
PRESSMAN: Civil libertarians go–hark back to the Republican Convention in ‘04 and the many people who were arrested or detained and then released. Thousands in all were involved in these demonstrations. Do you think that they have a legitimate complaint, that too many were detained, considering the results?
Mr. KELLY: No, the Republican National Convention was perhaps the finest hour in the history of the New York City Department.
PRESSMAN: Why do you say that?
Mr. KELLY: We had major, major challenges. Just look at the context in which it happened. You had the incumbent administration coming here for its convention. They were prosecuting, certainly, an unpopular war. We had literally thousands of groups talking on the Internet about what they were going to do when they came here. Many of them just peacefully protesting, but hundreds of them talking about shredding down the city. We had groups of anarchists coming here who had been arrested in places like Seattle, which they, in essence, closed down with militant…
Pressman then interrupts with another question so we never find out where “with militant” was going.
Here’s my problem.
There are tons of videos and photographs of the NYPD overstepping their bounds during the RNC. Videos of Police accosting groups of people and randomly arresting them for marching and protesting. Photos of police ganging up on protestors. Photos of police channeling protestors into a single file line around the Garden and then arresting them one by one.
Kelly claims 800,000 people protested, 1800 were arrested, only 67 of those 1800 complained, and only 3 of those 67 were substantiated.
As WikiPedia notes:
Several cases have since gone to court, and it has come out that the charges of resisting arrest in those cases were completely fabricated. Video evidence was shown of defendants complying peaceably with police demands. Many of the cases have since been summarily dismissed.
The police have been accused of acting as agents provocateurs during the protests.
Well, in the finest hour of the NYPD, aside from the hyperbolic claims of protestors and police sitting naked on 34th street singing kumbaya and smoking a pipe, we learned some of the “not so finest hour” stuff that happened during the RNC.
We learned that the hell-hole pier that people were taken to when they were arrested was paid for by the GOP (they obtained the title on the building before the RNC) and not the city, effectively creating a GOP (not federal government, we’re talking paid for by the Republican party) owned prison.
We learned of the mistreatment of arrested people and the overarching arrests of people who weren’t even involved in the protests to begin with.
And don’t get me started on the spying story. That’s a whole day’s worth of posts for another time.
That’s the NYPD’s finest hour? The NYCLU doesn’t think so:
“The NYPD has had many proud moments, but an event at which hundreds of law-abiding protesters and bystanders were arrested, were held for up to three days and were illegally fingerprinted is not our idea of a finest moment,” said Christopher Dunn, of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
I’d have to agree. I’d say it’s a black eye big time and the fact that anyone at the NYPD thinks it was a great moment in their history proves just how out of touch they really are. The fact that it’s the commissioner means that problem starts at the top.
