[ The abuse has been enabled by laws that shield officers from
accountability and by barriers to police oversight — as well as by
city leaders who have long allowed police to operate with impunity.]
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NEW YORK POLICE ARE ATTACKING PROTESTERS - THEY KNOW THEY WON'T FACE
CONSEQUENCES   [[link removed]]

 

Alice Speri, Ryan Devereaux, Sam Biddle
June 2, 2020
The Intercept
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_ The abuse has been enabled by laws that shield officers from
accountability and by barriers to police oversight — as well as by
city leaders who have long allowed police to operate with impunity. _

NYPD officers spray Mace into the crowd of protesters gathered at
Barclays Center to protest the recent murder of George Floyd on May
29, 2020, in Brooklyn, New York., Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

 

AS THOUSANDS OF PROTESTERS converged in Brooklyn on Monday evening,
NYPD scanners picked up a bit of radio chatter that stood out even in
the atmosphere of boiled-over police violence. After a police
dispatcher noted protester movement near the 77th Precinct, a voice on
the same channel replies clearly: “Shoot those motherfuckers.”
Just as clear was the immediate response: “Don’t put that over the
air.”

The exchange, at 6:20 p.m., was captured via Broadcastify, one of many
publicly accessible websites that allow users to listen in on police
and other emergency radio channels nationwide. These sites have
“skyrocketed to the top of the App Store
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the wake of George Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis, Vice
reported this week. An NYPD spokesperson confirmed the radio exchange
and told The Intercept that it is under internal review.

After days of increasingly violent repression of protests across the
country, and after President Donald Trump called for protesters
looting stores to be shot
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Defense Secretary Mark Esper called U.S. cities a “battlespace”
— the radio message was yet another indicator that police see
protesters as enemies to combat rather than the citizens they are
sworn to protect. But the chatter was also a sign of how emboldened
police have become in calling for violence, and how little they seem
to fear repercussions for violent attacks on civilians.

In New York City, as across the country, officers have responded to
protests prompted by anger at police violence and lack of
accountability with yet more violence and, mostly, no consequence.
Over the last several days, NYPD officers have beaten protesters with
nightsticks, ripped off masks to pepper-spray them
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close range, driven their vehicles into crowds, and in at least one
occasion pointed a gun at a group of demonstrators. These incidents,
police critics say, represent a significant escalation while also
being consistent with a long pattern of violence and lack of
accountability by the country’s largest police department. The abuse
has been enabled by laws that shield officers from accountability and
by barriers to police oversight — as well as by city leaders who
have long allowed police to operate with impunity.

“The disturbing videos and reports of the violent attacks by NYPD on
protestors and the media, while traumatizing to watch, are all too
familiar to us,” a group of New York City public defenders wrote in
a statement on Tuesday. “They mirror the stories we hear every day
of police acting with impunity, targeting, attacking, beating, lying,
abusing, and disrespecting Black and brown people in the communities
we serve in all five boroughs.”

In response to the police crackdown, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea
expressed his pride
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congratulated his officers for their actions — days
after condemning
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officers who killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, calling their actions
“deeply disturbing” and “not acceptable ANYWHERE.” Mayor Bill
de Blasio, for his part, who also condemned Floyd’s killing in
Minneapolis, continued his long-held practice of defending police
misconduct in the face of indisputable evidence
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attempted to shift the blame to protesters.

“I’ve seen that video and I’ve obviously heard about a number of
other instances. It’s inappropriate for protesters to surround a
police vehicle and threaten police officers,” de Blasio said earlier
this week, in reference to one of those incidents. “If a police
officer is in that situation, they have to get out of that
situation.”

The Civilian Complaint Review Board, New York’s independent office
for investigating police abuses, has received 467 complaints since
Friday, when the protests started, “and is committed to fully
investigating them,” a board spokesperson told The Intercept. But
the police department is investigating only six, according to Shea.
The NYPD spokesperson did not answer questions about several instances
of police violence and misconduct that were caught on video. A
spokesperson for the Attorney General’s office told The Intercept
they are aware of the NYPD radio exchange, but declined to comment
further or provide detail on any other ongoing investigation into
police actions.

Despite the videos, advocates and victims of police violence fear that
the officers involved in these incidents will escape accountability,
as a number of officers assigned to protests have begun covering
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badge numbers necessary to identify them. The NYPD did not comment on
officers covering their badges.

[Messages-Image33798744651]
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New York City police officers lined up right off the Brooklyn Bridge
on Brooklyn Bridge Boulevard on May 31, 2020, in New York. The officer
shown has covered his badge number with a “mourning band.” 
Photo: Obtained by The Intercept

Covering one’s badge number is in direct violation of the NYPD’s
patrol guide, which allows officers to wear “mourning bands”
covering the seal of the city upon the death of an officer but
mandates that the seal number and rank remain visible. In April,
Shea wrote
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that some officers would be wearing mourning bands in commemoration of
NYPD officers who died of Covid-19.

But covering one’s badge number also violates New York’s Right
to Know Act
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which mandates officers identify themselves by name, rank, and shield
number when they interact with people. The act, which went into effect
in 2018, also requires officers to inform those they stop that they
have a right to refuse consent for a search, and to document those
requests.

“It’s basically protecting NYPD officers from being held
accountable in these mass protests, where they’re not actually
following the law themselves,” said Jennvine Wong, a staff attorney
at the Legal Aid Society’s Cop Accountability Project, in reference
to growing reports of cops covering their badges. “Not only are they
not following the law when it comes to the way that they’re
interacting with individuals, but they’re also not providing the
information that they should be providing when they’re interacting
with the public.”

Officers had ignored their obligations under the Right to Know Act
long before this week’s protest, Wong noted. She called it a
“long-standing pattern with the NYPD.”

“It’s really problematic, because it makes it very difficult for
advocates for individuals who are the victims of police brutality to
hold these officers accountable if we’re not able to identify
them,” she added. “And so not only are they acting with impunity,
but they are actively trying to hide their identities from people who
would hold them accountable. … They’re attacking protesters, and
they’re covering their badge numbers. And so, even if we captured
them on camera, how are we supposed to hold them accountable?”

For the most part, New York law protects officers from meaningful
accountability. For years, before this week’s protests, advocates
have lobbied legislators to repeal a decades-old state law known as
“50-a,” which makes the personnel records of law enforcement
officers “confidential and not subject to inspection or review.”
As The Intercept has reported
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officials have responded to pressure for greater police transparency
with even stricter interpretations of 50-a, making everything from
complaints of misconduct to the findings of internal reviews, to body
camera footage largely inaccessible to the public. Efforts to repeal
50-a in court have failed, but the legislation was back in the
spotlight this week after Floyd was killed in Minneapolis. Derek
Chauvin, the officer accused of killing Floyd, had 18 previous
complaints of misconduct filed against him.

In New York, which has one of the strictest laws in the country
protecting the privacy of law enforcement officers, Gov. Andrew Cuomo
surprised advocates this week when he expressed support for repealing
50-a, despite the fact that the legislation has been hotly debated
during the nine years he has been in office. “I would sign a bill
today that reforms 50-a,” Cuomo said. “I would sign it today.”
De Blasio has defended 50-a, and under his administration the city has
stopped making the outcomes of internal disciplinary reviews available
to the public.

A spokesperson for Gov. Cuomo told The Intercept that “the Governor
supports reforming 50-A, and has said he will sign a bill that does
that,” adding that Cuomo “has asked the Attorney General
to review all actions and procedures
[[link removed]] used
during the protests.”

But advocates were skeptical of the governor’s promise — and
insisted that the legislation should be repealed rather than simply
amended. “He’s been silent on it previously,” said Wong, of
Legal Aid. “This is a movement that advocates have been working on
for years and years and years — they’ve been pushing for a repeal
of 50-a forever.”

“New Yorkers have been demanding change for years,” Council Member
Antonio Reynoso echoed in a statement condemning the NYPD and the
mayor’s handling of the protests. “The NYPD needs to immediately
release the disciplinary records of all officers, and where patterns
of misconduct by individual officers are discovered, those officers
must be terminated immediately and prosecuted where appropriate.”

Even before the recent wave of protests, the coronavirus emergency had
offered police a new opportunity to escape scrutiny. A city official,
speaking to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity, said that the
CCRB was already in a tough position before the protests began. With
New York City the epicenter of Covid-19, CCRB investigators, like
other city employees, have been working remotely for weeks. Although
investigations into police misconduct can be done remotely, the
official said — much of it involves pushing through cases that came
in long before the pandemic — the novel coronavirus has presented
unique problems.

First, the official said, the CCRB frequently fields complaints from
populations for whom physical visits to the board’s office is a
necessity: individuals who lack access to phones or the internet and,
in particular, New York City’s unhoused. “The other side of it is
the PBA,” the official said — the Patrolmen’s Benevolent
Association, the hard-right union representing New York City’s cops.
“There have been no officer interviews since the beginning of
Covid,” the official said, adding that without cooperation from the
PBA, oversight investigators can only go so far. All of this, of
course, comes after weeks of controversy surrounding the
NYPD’s hard-line enforcement of local social distancing
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— and, now, its hammer-fist approach to policing protests. The PBA
could not be reached for comment prior to publication.

While few expect the police department itself to conduct fair
investigations of officer abuse during the protests, advocates warned
that the questionable arrests and excessive force displayed in recent
days would likely lead to scores of civil lawsuits against the city.
Last year, the city paid $69 million to settle lawsuits over police
misconduct, an increase of nearly $30 million over the previous year.
And litigating misconduct lawsuits cost the city some $230 million in
2018 and $335.5 million in 2017.

Massive taxpayer-funded payouts over police misconduct are likely to
come under increased scrutiny this year, since the economic impact of
the Covid-19 crisis is forcing the city to slash its budget for next
year by $6 billion. But, as The Intercept has reported
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one city agency that has been largely spared the across-the-board
cuts: the NYPD.

_Alice Speri writes about justice, immigration, and civil rights. She
has reported from Palestine, Haiti, El Salvador, Colombia, and across
the United States. She is originally from Italy and lives in the
Bronx._

_Ryan Devereaux is an award-winning investigative journalist with a
focus on immigration, the drug war and US national security. Prior to
joining The Intercept he worked at the US Guardian covering policing
and criminal justice. His work was also published by Rolling Stone,
The Nation and Village Voice. He lives in New York City._

_Sam Biddle is a reporter focusing on malfeasance and misused power in
technology. While working at Gizmodo and Gawker, he covered stories
ranging from vast corporate data breaches and celebrity hackers to
trafficked webcam models and Facebook privacy. As the editor of
Valleywag, he provided a critical, adversarial view of the startup
economy and Silicon Valley culture. His work has also appeared in GQ,
Vice, and The Awl._

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