NYPD

Another Grand Jury Injustice: No Indictment In Eric Garner Killing

December 4, 2014 J David Goodman and Al Baker, www.nytimes.com Educate! Eric Garner, Law, New York City (NYC), NYPD, police brutality

A Staten Island grand jury on Wednesday ended the criminal case against a white New York police officer whose chokehold on an unarmed black man led to the man’s death, a decision that drew condemnation from elected officials and touched off a wave of protests. The fatal encounter in July was captured on videos and seen around the world. But after viewing the footage and hearing from witnesses, including the officer who used the chokehold, the jurors deliberated for less than a day before deciding that there was not enough evidence to go forward with charges against the officer, Daniel Pantaleo, 29, in the death of the man, Eric Garner, 43. Officer Pantaleo, who has been on the force for eight years, appeared before the grand jury on Nov. 21, testifying that he did not intend to choke Mr. Garner, who was being arrested for allegedly selling loose cigarettes. He described the maneuver as a takedown move, adding that he never thought Mr. Garner was in mortal danger.

New York City Protests Eric Garner Decision

December 4, 2014 Hunter Stuart, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Civil Disobedience, Eric Garner, Ferguson, New York City (NYC), NYPD, police brutality

New York City residents took to the streets on Wednesday after a grand jury said it would not bring charges in the death of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man who died in July after a police officer placed him in a chokehold. Garner, 43, was being arrested for selling loose, untaxed cigarettes on July 17 when New York City Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo placed him in an illegal chokehold. The medical examiner ruled Garner's death a homicide, but the grand jury said Wednesday it would not indict Pantaleo. Demonstrators gathered across the city, from the Staten Island neighborhood where Garner died to high-traffic areas in midtown Manhattan. They assembled in Times Square, Union Square and Lincoln Center. They marched down Broadway and blocked traffic on the West Side Highway. Police scrambled to keep the crowd from disrupting the Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center. Nearly three dozen demonstrators were reportedly arrested, though the protests remained largely non-violent.

NYPD Sent Investigators To Ferguson To Monitor ‘Professional Agitators’

December 1, 2014 Tom Hays, www.AP.org Educate! Eric Garner, Ferguson, NYPD, police brutality, Protests

The Garner video — along with a medical examiner's finding that the chokehold contributed to his death on the streets of Staten Island — should give a grand jury ample reason to indict, said Garner's mother, Gwen Carr. The NYPD sent detectives to Missouri to gather intelligence on "professional agitators" who frequent protests and to share strategies for quelling violence, said Police Commissioner William Bratton. Police also have kept in touch with community leaders on Staten Island to coordinate the response to the grand jury decision. The Garner case stems from a July 17 confrontation between Officer Daniel Pantaleo and other NYPD officers who stopped him on suspicion of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes. The video shot by an onlooker shows the 43-year-old Garner, who was black, telling the officers to leave him alone and refusing to be handcuffed.

NYPD Cracks Down On Ferguson Thanksgiving Day Parade Protest

November 28, 2014 Dell Cameron, www.dailydot.com Resist! Ferguson, New York City (NYC), NYPD, police brutality

Multiple arrests were made by the New York Police Department (NYPD) on Thursday morning as protesters incensed by the lack of criminal charges brought againstFerguson, Mo., Police Officer Darren Wilson engaged incivil disobedience at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. NYPD confronted around 100 demonstrators who attempted to enter the Manhattan parade while carrying protest signs. One such sign read: “From the first Thanksgiving to this one, fuck ur [sic] celebration of genocide.” As many as seven of the protesters were arrested by officers, who, according to eyewitnesses, violently pushed, pulled, and shoved the demonstrators to the ground after kettling them with metal barriers.

NYPD Commissioner Bratton Splattered With Fake Blood At Protest

November 26, 2014 Alyssa Figueroa, www.alternet.org Resist! Ferguson, New York City (NYC), NYPD, police brutality

Protests took place across the country last night after the grand jury in Ferguson failed to indict officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown. In NYC, thousands of protesters swarmed Times Square and eventually shut down the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Triborough bridges. In the midst of the Times Square protest, one activist threw fake blood on NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton. Bratton has been fiercely criticized for the NYPD's broken-windows policy of policing that focuses on patrolling communities of color and cracking down on low-level crimes. His theory is replicated in police departments nationwide. In Ferguson, Officer Darren Wilson approached Michael Brown for not walking on the sidewalk.

Ray McGovern Describes Brutal Arrest At Petraeus Event (VIDEO)

November 1, 2014 Russian Times, www.rt.com Resist! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, NYPD, police brutality

Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst-turned-antiwar activist, shared details with RT on Friday about an incident the night before in New York City during which he was arrested for trying to enter a public event. McGovern, 75, says he had ticket to see former CIA director David Petraeus speak Thursday night at the 92nd Street Y, a “world-class cultural and community center,” according to its website, but wasarrested before he could get inside. “I was warned as soon as I got to the ticket-taker, ‘Ray, you’re not welcome here,’” he recalled to RT. An adamant critic of the wartime policies of the current White House administration and that of George W. Bush, McGovern has previously been arrested while demonstrating at public events. Speaking to RT this week, he said he intended on asking a question to Gen. Petraeus during an advertised question-and-answer session following Thursday’s event, but was forcefully removed by police before it was underway.

Pranksters Expose The NYPD’s Serious Racial Profiling Problem

November 1, 2014 Alex Smith, www.ryot.org Educate! NYPD, police brutality, Racial Justice, Racial Profiling

The NYPD was just caught racial profiling yet again. This time, the proof is on video and it’s so extreme, it will make your stomach drop. Two YouTube pranksters staged an experiment — arguing in front of the same policeman while they were dressed in Western clothes and, then again, twenty minutes later in Muslim clothes. The difference between the officer’s response to the scenarios is stark. When Adam Saleh and Sheiikh Akbar were dressed in Western city garb and speaking in American accents, the police offer pretended not to see them. Just twenty minutes later, they wore what they called Muslim “cultural clothes” and spoke with a foreign accent while they argued. What followed was one really angry officer.

NY Releases List Of Military Gear & Equipment

October 25, 2014 Shawn Musgrave, www.muckrock.com Educate! NYPD, Police the Police, Wars and Militarism

Over the past several years, more than 120 law enforcement agencies across the state, from the NYPD to Tuckahoe, have obtained military-grade equipment through the Pentagon’s 1033 program, which transfers excess military equipment to state and local police across the country. Late last week, for the first time, state officials released a detailed inventory of the equipment obtained by individual agencies. A review of the data revealed: Since enrolling in 1995, the NYPD has obtained four armored trucks valued at $65,000 each and two former artillery vehicles known as mortar carriers valued at more than $200,000 each. The NYPD received one such heavily armored vehicle in June 2012.

NYPD Has Paid Over $400 Million In Settlements

October 24, 2014 JPat Brown, www.muckrock.com Educate! NYPD, police brutality, Police the Police

As part of an ongoing investigation, MuckRock's Todd Feathers asked the NYPD for a list of all civil rights lawsuits brought against the department. To his surprise, what he got was every case brought against the NYPD since 2009, and how much those cases cost them. To all of MuckRock's surprise, that amount is almost half a billion dollars. We've only just begun to look through the data, but already there's a couple interesting take-aways: one, the sheervolume of capital that is being spent on settlements, and two, that the overwhelming majority of these cases end with the NYPD at fault. While's there a handful of Zero Disposition and Administrative Closing statuses, the Settlement category outnumbers them three to one.

Parents Of Kids Murdered By Cops Confront NYPD

October 3, 2014 Amy K. Nelson, www.animalnewyork.com Organize! Community, Law, NYPD, police brutality, Police the Police

It was around 7:30PM when Margarita Rosario took the microphone at the Sunset Park rec center, turned to a table that seated five police officers and told the story of how her son had been murdered by NYPD cops. “My son, Anthony Rosario, had 14 bullets in his back, face down on the floor,” Rosario said. “Now who is the criminal? My son? Or [the police officers]?” Rosario, three others parents whose children had been killed by the NYPD, and hundreds of residents in this diverse community, came together at an old gymnasium on Wednesday night for a town hall on police brutality.

Nicholas Heyward Sr. On The Killing Of His Son By NYPD

August 23, 2014 Josmar Trujillo, www.truth-out.org Educate! NYPD, Police, Politics, Violence

Twenty years ago this September, New York Police Department housing cop Brian George shot and killed 13-year-old Nicholas Heyward Jr. The boy was playing with a toy guy with other kids from the housing projects in Brooklyn where they lived when he and George met in the staircase. The City and the district attorney, Charles Hynes, argued that George mistook the toy gun for a real one and did not bring charges against George. Heyward's family and the kids playing with the young boy insisted he dropped the gun before the shots were fired. George never served a day in jail for the death, but the incident sparked 20 years of activism by Heyward's father, Nicholas Heyward Sr. Today, Hynes is facing a grand jury probe for corruption. I met Heyward Sr. at several policing-reform events over the years and worked with him closely as we campaigned against the appointment and return of Bill Bratton to head the NYPD. Bratton was NYPD commissioner at the time Heyward Jr. was killed. He also famously called Heyward and the mothers of Anthony Rosario and Anthony Baez - who joined him as the well-known parent group Parents Against Police Brutality - a "bunch of fools" during an infamous 1995 town hall meeting in the Bronx alongside then-mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Will This Homicide Result In A Prosecution?

August 3, 2014 Ben Mathis-Lilley, www.slate.com Educate! Law, NYPD, police brutality, Violence

New York City's medical examiner has ruled that Eric Garner—the 43-year-old Staten Island man who died after being put in a chokehold by an NYPD officer in an incident caught on video—was the victim of a homicide. Eric Garner's death ruled a homicide by medical examiner. "Cause of Death: Compression of neck (choke hold)" during restraint by police — jdavidgoodman (@jdavidgoodman) August 1, 2014 Goodman is a New York Times police reporter. From the New York Daily News: A spokeswoman for the medical examiner said Friday that Garner died from compression of the neck, which the office labeled a chokehold, and compression of the chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by cops. The Pix11 TV station reported this week that a police report on Garner's arrest did not mention that he was put in a chokehold. The NYPD's guidelines prohibit the move's use.

Protect Bystanders Who Record Police

July 28, 2014 Debra Goodman, www.nydailynews.com Resist! NYPD, Police, Violence

Let no one forget: If not for the fact that a bystander with a camera phone captured Eric Garner’s confrontation with cops — and that the video then found its way to the Daily News — Garner’s death might have ended up like most all of the other approximately 1,000 complaints of chokeholds filed at the Civilian Complaint Review Board over the last five years: unsubstantiated allegations of police abuse. Instead, the officer who placed Garner in an apparent chokehold had his gun taken away and was placed on modified duty; another police officer was placed on desk duty, and four paramedics and EMTs were placed on modified duty. Moreover, the CCRB is revisiting those 1,000 “unsubstantiated” chokehold complaints, and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has pledged to overhaul police training. It all happened because we could see, with our own eyes, a deeply disturbing, violent encounter between cops and an unarmed man. Yet, amazingly, the constitutional right of the bystander who recorded Garner’s death to have done so is not acknowledged in New York. In fact, the NYPD routinely arrests and threatens to arrest people who are filming them but not interfering with police activity. They did it to me. This unconstitutional practice needs to stop. That’s why, last week, I filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to confirm and enshrine this right to film or record the police.

Lawsuit Filed Against NYPD For Arresting People Video Taping Them

July 17, 2014 Gothamist, www.gothamist.com Resist! First Amendment, NYPD, Police

First Amendment aside, the NYPD still regularly arrests (and in some cases, taunts) bystanders who film officers and do not interfere with police actions. One officer even lied to make his arrest of a New York Times photographer legitimate. Now civil rights attorney Norman Siegel has filed a lawsuit in federal court that would stop city employees from seeking reprisals against those who would record them in public. "The NYPD maintains a policy, practice and custom in which officers interfere with the rights of individuals who, without interfering with police activity, are recording to attempting to record officers performing their officials duties in public," the lawsuit states, citing eight instances in which the police wrongfully arrested New Yorkers for recording them. One of those New Yorkers, Debra Goodman, was taking a cellphone video of paramedics assisting a woman in a wheelchair on West 73rd Street and Broadway last year before a police officer intervened.

Cecily McMillan Speaks Out On Abuse Endured During Arrest

July 10, 2014 Kira Brekke, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Cecily McMillan, NYPD, police brutality, Rape Culture, Women's Rights

The Occupy Wall Street protester who was jailed for elbowing an officer in the face was released just last Wednesday, and she is now speaking out about the brutality she faced while incarcerated. Her arrest sparked outrage and for the 58 days that she served, she said she endured serious brutality, including sexual assault: I was locked up, hands and feet with my legs spread open, exposed in a storage closet with bloody rags all around. Officers were using this space to charge their cell phones, coming in and out, talking about how I needed a good hard you-know-what because I was obviously so out of control as a woman. It was not an environment in which I could have said, ‘Hey, you know what, you guys ought to listen to me, I was sexually assaulted by a police officer.'

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