Name: Policing the police, finally: The NYPD has treated protesters brutally for decades
Brand: nydailynews.com
SKU: nydailynews-com-733
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

Policing the police, finally: The NYPD has treated protesters brutally for decades

preview

AdvertisementBy New York Daily NewsJan 17, 2021 at 5:00 amTurn away for a moment from Washington D.C.’s Trump-loving, cop-assaulting “protesters” to read New York Attorney General Letitia James’ about the NYPD’s summer beating up and arresting lawful and peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters on the watch of a mayor who won that office on a pledge to reform the police but who’s ended up as a hostage to his own department.People of the State of New York vs. The City of New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio, Police Commissioner Dermot F. Shea and Chief of Department Terence A. Monahan is an unprecedented suit by the AG against a local police department and its leadership — one that feels overdue in response to a pattern and practice of abusive and illegal policing of protests going back to at least 2004.AdvertisementOne new account in James’ suit is from a student named Dorthley Beauval, who’d been “walking from a BLM protest” by Trump Tower in June when an unmarked police van pulled up next to him and “(m)ultiple uniformed NYPD Officers exited the van onto the sidewalk, pulled Beauval to the ground by his backpack, pinned him on his side, and, without provocation or justification, repeatedly struck his face and body with fists. Beauval heard one NYPD Officer say that he was going to ‘f--k him up,’” as they “broke Beauval’s glasses into fragments that entered Beauval’s eyes.”Then the officers arrested Beauval for supposedly attempting to burgle a nearby store. In fact, the suit notes, “(v)ideo surveillance of the allegedly burglarized store did not show Beauval in or near the store.” It concludes: “After the attack, Beauval withdrew from his school.”AdvertisementElsewhere, the suit notes that while Officer Vincent D’Andrai — who smacked a phone out of protester Dounya Zayer’s hand at a protest in Brooklyn in May, then called her a “stupid f--king bitch” and shoved her so that she fell backward and hit her head on the pavement — was suspended without pay by the NYPD and charged with misdemeanor assault by the Brooklyn DA, the deputy inspector who saw this happen, Craig Edelman, was reassigned but not otherwise disciplined.After the assault, Zayer “reported being too frightened to attend later protests,” a refrain repeated through the suit. The accounts, including ones of widely circulated incidents that de Blasio somehow always ended up being the last person to see, start to blur together, along with the photos of people’s bloody faces and dazed expressions.WeekdaysCatch up on the day’s top five stories every weekday afternoon. &gt; The suit details how the police kept violating the law and their own procedures by arresting legal observers, medics and journalists, not to mention unlucky delivery guys. How the police roughed up two state lawmakers in Brooklyn, first using bicycles as battering rams to hit them and then pepper-spraying them. Finally, an officer cuffed state Sen. Zellnor Myrie before letting him go while others simply ignored Assemblywoman Diana Richardson after knocking her to the ground.And the suit notes that Chief of Department Terence Monahan, the NYPD’s highest-ranking uniformed official, was also in charge of the city’s . Then, and again this year, he personally oversaw scenes where officers beat up and wrongfully arrested dozens of citizens. It’s a time warp, as the suit notes that the NYPD’s protest training is decades out of date, often counterproductive when it’s given and often not given at all.The AG’s suit, of a piece with one the New York Civil Liberties Union and Legal Aid Society filed in October detailing similar abuses, seeks only declaratory and injunctive relief, which is a fancy way of talking about adding yet another court-appointed monitor to oversee the NYPD.Just after he was elected mayor, de Blasio dropped the city’s appeal of Federal Judge Shira Scheindlin’s legally dubious decision finding the application of stop and frisk policing here unconstitutional. In the process, he effectively passed the buck for his admirable campaign pledge to end stop and frisk policing as New York had known it from himself to a court-appointed monitor, thus shielded himself from accountability with the community groups who’d been pressing for more sweeping changes.Eight years later he’s talking, absurdly, about how the NYPD is reforming itself and doesn’t need outside forces to hold it accountable.Not that another monitor, who answers only to one judge, would be likely to fundamentally change things. New York City needs a political solution, not a judicial one: a new mayor in office next year who takes seriously his or her civilian leadership of the NYPD, and who’s held to account by lawmakers who take their oversight responsibilities steadily and seriously. And for the NYPD to answer to the politicians who answer to the people the NYPD is supposed to serve and protect.Advertisement Advertisement

AdvertisementBy New York Daily NewsJan 17, 2021 at 5:00 amTurn away for a moment from Washington D.C.’s Trump-loving, cop-assaulting “protesters” to read New York Attorney General Letitia James’ about the NYPD’s summer beating up and arresting lawful and peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters on the watch of a mayor who won that office on a pledge to reform the police but who’s ended up as a hostage to his own department.People of the State of New York vs. The City of New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio, Police Commissioner Dermot F. Shea and Chief of Department Terence A. Monahan is an...

public

Harry Siegel

NY's Hometown Paper 🍎 Breaking news, national (with a NY lens), sports, politics, entertainment NYC & beyond | About http://bit.ly/nydnmedia1, ➡️ http://bit.ly/nydnsubscribe

Policing the police, finally: The NYPD has treated protesters brutally for decades

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS