NYPD Is Accused of Abuse in N.Y. Lawsuit Over BLM Protests

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Jan 14 2021, 9:25 PMJan 14 2021, 11:30 PMJanuary 14 2021, 9:25 PMJanuary 14 2021, 11:30 PM

(Bloomberg) -- New York state’s top law enforcement official sued New York City’s police department and Mayor Bill de Blasio over officers’ treatment of people protesting racial injustice after the murder of George Floyd last May.

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed the civil rights lawsuit on Thursday, less than a month after the mayor vowed to adopt stricter police oversight following an internal investigation by the city that discovered widespread instances of excessive force by the New York City Police Department.

The state’s own probe found “an egregious abuse of police power” and leadership that was “unable or unwilling to stop it,” James said at a press conference announcing the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan.

While it isn’t unusual for federal prosecutors to go after local police departments in civil rights cases, the lawsuit by New York pits two of the state’s most powerful Democrats against each other in court.

BLM Protests

The mayor’s press secretary, Bill Neidhardt, said the administration would respond to a request for comment on the suit after the attorney general’s news conference. The NYPD said it would have a statement in the afternoon.

In the state’s probe, joined by former U.S. attorney general Loretta Lynch, James and Lynch in June held a public hearing into the conduct of police during weeks of Black Lives Matter protests, including numerous witnesses who alleged police attacked peaceful protesters without provocation.

The lawsuit outlines what James calls a long history of bad policing of protests in the nation’s biggest city, including during anti-war rallies in 2003, the Republican National Convention in New York in 2004 and the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011. In 2015, the NYPD’s inspector general issued a report concluding that the department’s use-of-force policy was “vague and imprecise, providing little guidance to individual officers on what actions constitute force and providing insufficient instruction on de-escalation,” according to the suit.

The same type of police behavior “was on public display” during last year’s protests in New York, James said at the press conference.

‘Systemic Reforms’

In the suit, James seeks a ruling that would block the police from using excessive force or suppressing free speech, among other acts. She seeks a court finding that the behavior violated protesters’ First Amendment rights and asks for “systemic reforms” and a monitor to oversee the department’s policing tactics at future protests.

The complaint also names the city, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea and Chief of Department Terence Monahan. It includes dozens of examples of alleged use of excessive force. The state received more than 1,300 complaints and pieces of evidence through an online portal and a hot line, James said.

Read the city’s internal report here

“Over the past few months, the NYPD has repeatedly and blatantly violated the rights of New Yorkers, inflicting significant physical and psychological harm and leading to great distrust in law enforcement,” she said in a statement. “With today’s lawsuit, this longstanding pattern of brutal and illegal force ends. No one is above the law -- not even the individuals charged with enforcing it.”

Injured Officers

The city’s police union has said its members were put in an impossible situation.

In a statement responding to the city’s internal report in December, Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch said almost 400 officers were injured, “struck with bricks, bottles, fire extinguishers and folding chairs,” because of “mixed messages emanating from City Hall and Albany.”

Lynch has blamed city leaders for sending officers out “with no plan, no strategy and no support to deal with unrest that was fundamentally different from any of the thousands of demonstrations that police officers successfully protect every single year.”

The state’s claims mirror some findings from the city’s inquiry, by its Department of Investigation, which was requested by de Blasio. The police department’s most flagrant abuses included indiscriminate baton and pepper spray use, inconsistent enforcement of curfews and excessive crowd control that heightened tensions, the city determined.

The NYPD did have legal authority to make arrests for curfew violations to stop suspected looting but ended up arresting many who weren’t involved in criminal activity, the report said. Investigators found that some officers tried to hide their badge numbers and that enforcement decisions were often based on faulty intelligence and poor training.

De Blasio said last month that officials and police who don’t change tactics will be removed.

The case is State of New York v. City of New York, 21-cv-00322, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).