- WHAT COULD HAPPEN TO THE REST OF US DEPARTMENT -

Arrests at GOP Convention Are Criticized

One late August evening, Alexander Pincus pedaled his bicycle to the Second Avenue Deli to buy matzo ball soup, a pastrami-on-rye and potato latkes for his sweetheart, who was sick with a cold.

He would not return for 28 hours. As Pincus and a friend left the deli, they inadvertently walked into a police blockade and sweep of bicycle-riding protesters two days before the Republican National Convention began. "I asked an officer how I could get home," Pincus recalled. "He said, 'Follow me,' and we went a few feet and cops grabbed us. They handcuffed us and made us kneel for an hour."

Police carted Pincus to a holding cell topped with razor wire and held him for 25 hours without access to a lawyer. The floor was a soup of oil and soot, he said, and the cell had so few portable toilets that some people relieved themselves in the corner. Pincus said a shoulder was dislocated as police pulled back his arms to handcuff him. "Cops kept saying to us, 'This is what you get for protesting,' " said Pincus, whose account of his arrest is supported in part by deli workers and a time-stamped food receipt.

Pincus was one of 1,821 people arrested in police sweeps before and during the Republican convention, the largest number of arrests associated with any American major-party convention. At the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968, which unlike New York's was marked by widespread police brutality, cops made fewer than 700 arrests.

In the days after the convention, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly stated that "every NYPD officer did a great job." But interviews with state court officials, City Council representatives, prosecutors, protesters and civil libertarians -- and a review of videos of demonstrations -- point to many problems with the police performance. Officers often sealed off streets with orange netting and used motor scooters and horses to sweep up hundreds of protesters at a time, including many who appear to have broken no laws. In two cases, police commanders appeared to allow marches to proceed, only to order many arrests minutes later.

Most of those arrested were held for more than two days without being arraigned, which a state Supreme Court judge ruled was a violation of legal guidelines. Defense attorneys predict a flood of civil lawsuits once protesters have settled the misdemeanor charges lodged against them.

"The overriding problem during the convention was the indiscriminate arrests . . . of people who did nothing wrong," Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said at a City Council hearing last week. "They were arrested because they were . . . participating in a lawful demonstration."

Police officials declined to talk about these problems last week, citing a pending court case. But the city's criminal justice coordinator, John Feinblatt, said in an interview that city lawyers tried to weed out the unjustly arrested and that the volume of arrests -- more than 1,100 on one day -- overwhelmed the police department. More broadly, Bloomberg and Kelly defended the vast majority of the arrests as justified and described holding cells as clean and humane.

Bloomberg, in interviews during convention week, said that protesters expected prisons to look like "Club Med." Kelly said police encountered other delays as they tried to find separate cells for a large number of female detainees.

The first mass arrests came three days before the Aug. 30 to Sept. 2 convention, when police swooped down on Critical Mass, a loosely knit collective of bicyclists who periodically flood city streets and slow traffic. Police usually tolerate the disruption, but that night officers arrested more than 200. Kelly told New York magazine that he wanted to send protesters a message.

The next few days were quiet, and a quarter-million-strong march went forward Aug. 29 without incident.

But the mood changed Aug. 31, when police made 1,128 arrests. Anarchists had pledged a day of resistance, blocking traffic. Police arrested hundreds, and civil liberties lawyers on the scene described most arrests as lawful.

But farther downtown on the same day, the War Resisters League, a decades-old pacifist group, was readying a peaceful march from Ground Zero to Madison Square Garden, where it intended to conduct a civil disobedience "die in."

A video provided by the New York Civil Liberties Union shows police commanders laying out the ground rules: As long as protesters did not block traffic, they would not get arrested during the walk north. (No permit is required for a march on a sidewalk as long as protesters leave space for other pedestrians to pass.) Within a block or two, however, the video shows marchers lined up on the sidewalk, far from an intersection, as a police officer announces on a bullhorn: "You're under arrest."

"They came with batons, bicycles, they came with netting," said the Rev. G. Simon Harak, a Jesuit priest. "The kind of forces you expect to be turned on terrorists was unleashed on us."

Police arrested 200 people, saying they had blocked the sidewalk.

About the same time Tuesday, several other groups of protesters started walking two abreast from Union Square, the city's historic protest soapbox, to Madison Square Garden. However, several demonstrators say -- and photographs show -- that police soon stopped them, asked them to raise their hands and arrested them.

Throughout the week, police also picked up dozens of people who appeared to have nothing to do with demonstrations, the New York Civil Liberties Union said. Among those swept up by police were several newspaper reporters, two women shopping at the Gap, a feeder company executive out for dinner with a friend, and Wendy Stefanelli, a costume designer with the TV show "Sex and the City," who was walking to get a drink with a friend.

She saw a police officer pushing a demonstrator against a wall and asked him to lay off. Police flooded the street, and she was arrested. "I don't know how this could happen," Stefanelli, 35, told the City Council last week. "I was coming from work."

Bloomberg has acknowledged that police may have arrested some innocent bystanders, but he suggested that it was partly their fault.

"If you go to where people are protesting and don't want to be part of the protest, you're always going to run the risk that maybe you'll get tied up with it," he said on a weekly radio show on WABC.

Police hauled those arrested to newly built holding cells in a former bus depot on the Hudson River. In interviews, two dozen protesters from six states described floors covered in oil and officers who denied access to family and lawyers.

During this time, Deputy Police Commissioner Paul J. Browne twice stated to The Washington Post that most protesters had been released after six or seven hours. Only on Thursday, the last day of the convention, did he acknowledge the much longer delays.

Last Friday, Feinblatt, the city's criminal justice coordinator, attributed the problems to a glut of arrests. Other city officials have spoken of state delays in processing fingerprints.

But senior police officials had said for months that they anticipated 1,000 arrests a day during the convention. Citing such warnings, state court officials, prosecutors and Legal Aid lawyers doubled staffing and opened extra courtrooms during convention week.

"What happened for several days is that we had resources available and we simply were not getting the bodies produced, the defendants in the courtroom," said David Bookstaver, spokesman for the state office of court administration.

State officials also released figures showing that they had processed 94 percent of all fingerprints within one hour.

The backlog created a legal crisis for the city. State Supreme Court Judge John Cataldo held officials in contempt of court. "These people," Cataldo said of those arrested, "have already been victims of the process."

His order resulted in the release of almost 500 people. Tricia Schriefer of Milwaukee had spent two days trying to find her daughter, Claire, 19, a college student who had been arrested Aug. 31. Tricia Schriefer called the police and city offices, only to be told that her daughter was in a legal twilight.

Her daughter was finally released -- without charges -- after Cataldo issued his ruling. "To be held for 50 hours and not be charged . . . it's pretty outrageous," Schriefer said. "It's just counter to everything I had understood about our legal process."

Since the convention ended, protesters have flocked daily into Manhattan Criminal Court, where most of them are accepting misdemeanors and violations -- charges that would typically carry no jail term. The difference between them and someone caught double-parking is that the protesters already had spent two days in jail.

"Too many New Yorkers were willing to look away," said Norman Siegal, a civil liberties lawyer who is representing Pincus. "We don't lose our rights overnight with a big bang; we lose them incrementally over time."

Source: Truthout http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/092204Y.shtml

-- Anti-bush (Comrade_bleh@hotmail.com), September 29, 2004

Answers

This is ridiculous... riot cops looking for any excuse to beat down peaceful protestors. But, as a riot cop, how could you not arrest them? They're so damn infuriating, with their "constitutional rights". Damn, I wish I could do something about it... hmmm... I know! I'll just IGNORE the law, which is my job and duty to protect. That's just about the way this levels out. The police are all facists.

-- U msut Feers Me (W.lovesblow@blank.com), September 29, 2004.

LOL OH MY GOD YOU BELIEVE THIS? IF THIS WHERE TRUE WOULD IT NOT BE ALL OVER THE NEWS? FURTHERMORE, MY MOTHER AND FATHER WHERE BOTH IN LAW ENFORCEMENT FOR THE CITY OF CHARLOTTESVILE AND FEDERAL GOV.. I KNOW THIS IS BS FROM HOW THEY EXPLAIN PROCEDURE TO ME.

-- Lt. Alexander (Annunaki God@aol.com), September 29, 2004.

Thats one thing I will say that saddens me about Canada... our Riot Police are insane.

Ive got footage of the G8 summit a few years back up north, the one I was at. You can see how crazy we were beat, when there was only a few assholes throwing shit.

-- Kayce (K@C.com), September 30, 2004.

Am I supposed to give a shit about this. Really, at all? Was he let out after 24 hours? Well so what. False arrest at worst.

Since my pesonal info was given out here a few years ago on this server, I shall tell you some personal experiences of mine, and the Big Town I live in.

I know someone who tackled to the ground by some police after he was as resistent as possible. Not taclked really, they came up behind him, took his hands and twisted them back. Because he called the police on some guy at a liquor store who witheld his change, because he said he owed him money. When he asked for his money back, the liquor store owner pulled out a crow bar, which is assault and techincally robbery.

So he called the cops on him. He then waited outside, for the police to show up. They did nothing, when they were about to leave, he yelled something at the liquor store owner like chicken shit. And he the owner slammed the door in his face. The cops then jumped him who were twice less then combined his age. They did not tell him what he was under arrest for, rather then handcuff him, they bent his arms backwards. He did not resist at all. They stupid way they bent his arms back, he is a 250 pound Tokwondo (sic) blackbelt. He could have just kicked out their knees, and would if they were not cops. But they were so freaked out they were to scared to just tell him he was under arrest. No he did not been drinking a thing, they just were threatened by his size. He was not charged with anything. He damn well didn't plead out, and the charges were just dropped. Classy story huh? But he was in his 50's and had never been arrrested for aynthing in his life.

In this same city, a retarded 15 year old black kid, was swining a knife in his house aimlessly. When the cop came, rather then just knocking it out his hand with his night stick, the punk could scared and shot the boy dead.

They caught some guy in the alley with a can of spray paint, they thought was a gun and put about 50 bullets in him.

After car chase for several miles, they finally caught this unaramed speed freak in a garage, and pumped about 4 dozen bullets into him. Rather then just pull him out the car. Can you imagine what greif the people in LA would have been spared had they been allowed to do that to Rodney King.

There was some theif in an outer suburb who was running away unarmed with no stolen property and the cop did not shoot him in the foot, but in the back of the head an alley down.

I can get a sense of the anger blacks must feel at times for the police. Of course people may actually take actual cases of bliatient police abuse like this more serious, and side with them more. If the same spokesmen were not stupid punks were write songs about pointlessly turning their neighborhoods into bloodbaths THEN write a song about how they police wrongfully?? arrest them. And how they are going to kill them. The Law should just be black and white.

This is in Denver which has the most attorneys per capita besides Washington DC (which BTW is the crime capital of just about everything) Yet there is these aggregious violations of civil liberties. They have also made it a rule now that some medical centers such as CU of Denver a state hospital, can only give attention to NON DENVER citizens in Colorado. Which is a city taking president over states rights. Hell they built a 5 billion dollar airport called DIA that is not even in Denver County.

For every law passed by Congress there are 8,000 more that then must be written? How do you enfource that many laws? With attorneys there are very many laws, and very little order. This country is indeed headed towards Anarchy.

There are voting ballots in Spanish here. That I have seen upclose and personal and the booths. I thought in order to vote you had to be a Citizen, and in order to be a Citizen you had to know English? Well the booths having no way of veryfying if an individual voter is a Citizen for sure, because since Congress passed the Motor Voter Bill of 1993, districts can choose whether or not to ask for photo idenification and proof of citizenship. So they figured since they know, and I know why they did this, they may as well also make the Ballots in Spanish. Which I assume they are in every district with a high alien influx, that is coincidently highly Democratic.

So this is why I really am not very frightened about the Patriot Act. I am not some asshole who goes to demonstations with biking protesters, on a fucking bike, who then goes up to cops. I stay away from anywhere in this city with lots of cops, I am far more frigthened of them then the punks. The Cops are punks, they aren't pigs they are just squarred fucking squirls either reacting to memories of old past bullies, or easy to idenifify with the pussy punks, dirtbags, and bubble gum theives that make up a large number of arrests in this town - they are obviously able to identify with them. They are obviously not equipted to deal with real crimes. I have no resepct for them I have sure don't have any confidence in them, but unlike liberals and 99.9% of attorneys and buearocrats they actualy serve a function.

I'd advice that asshole that got arrested to chose a different means of transportation, the next time he decides to confront police in the middle of a protest such as this. I think they can hold you without a charge if they think you are high out of your mind.

If you are not engaged in some anti-American asshole activities you should not fear being hassled by the Patriot Act either. If you host radical sites with links to bombs, maybe you should not be suprised. Maybe you should have done this bullshit before we had such a high secturity risk as 3,000 people killed in the World Trade Center. And I thought after this incident people would focus less on contimplating their naval lint. Not with these divise liberal groups, who must have their power base.

This is my last post for awhile. I am glad you let me be on this site for so long. I am sorry one of you killed my C Drive. Thanks for the debates, and helping make the internet a better freer exchange of ideas, where both sides are presented and great personalities like mine make all the difference.

See ya an wouldn't wanna be ;-)

-- Joel (manynames@greenspun.com), September 30, 2004.

"LOL OH MY GOD YOU BELIEVE THIS? IF THIS WHERE TRUE WOULD IT NOT BE ALL OVER THE NEWS?"

Oh yeah, because the American media is never afraid to tell the side of the story that makes the establishment look bad. It was all over the news. The independent news sources were screaming about it. You just can't tell from the couch.

"FURTHERMORE, MY MOTHER AND FATHER WHERE BOTH IN LAW ENFORCEMENT FOR THE CITY OF CHARLOTTESVILE AND FEDERAL GOV.. I KNOW THIS IS BS FROM HOW THEY EXPLAIN PROCEDURE TO ME. "

Well, seeing as how Charlottesville is such a hotbed of protesters, I can see how your parents would be very experienced in how police deal with large protests. Oh wait, never mind. Charlottesville is out in the middle of nowhere. How many political conventions (and the hundreds of thousands of protesters tht come along with it) has it hosted? Your parents wouldn't know jack shit about dealing with situations like the one in New York, and neither would you.

"If you are not engaged in some anti-American asshole activities you should not fear being hassled by the Patriot Act either."

I'm sure the Germans thought that as long as they were not Jewish they were in no danger of being hassled. But pretty soon they came for the communists. Then the labor leaders. Then the people who spoke out against the government. It's a slippery slope. How do you define "anti-American"? Anyone who speaks their mind? Anyone who speaks out against the establishment? I got news for you, pal: this country was built on fighting the powers that be. Protesting for a cause is just about the most American thing you can do.

"Maybe you should have done this bullshit before we had such a high secturity risk as 3,000 people killed in the World Trade Center."

Those who would give up liberty for safety deserve neither.

-- Anti-bush (Comrade_bleh@hotmail.com), September 30, 2004.

It's times like these that I'm glad that I live in an obscure town up in Humboldt County.

-- Dean Earrlayer (dermondstate@citywoxley.org), October 01, 2004.

Uh, Dean dickhead: Don't use my e-mail address for anything ever again. I don't even live in California.

-- -- (dermondstate@citywoxley.org), October 01, 2004.

We got people making bomb sites on anti government sites? Can you imagine how absurd it would sound if people were handing out such pamplets during world war 2? And they were arrested. But people said "No it is more important to defend their right to do such things." No it's not! I wonder what these terrorist symphathizer's attitudes would be if 9/11 happened during a Democratic presidency. You would think with this attack people would start focusing on more important things and unite. Never with these divisive and self interest groups.

Those that would sacrice the future of their group, over the whole of the society will get neither. Parasites cannot host even themselves. Who gives a shit if these self indulgent little pricks are arrested??

As for Denver, you left out a very important thing concerning apartment tenants. They have absolutely no rights whatsover. A landlord can kick you out without going to court for any reason whatsoever. I know someone who was kicked out of an apartment when they were in their early 20's. Because they wouldn't something from their own reserved parking space. This mad polack called and bitched that it was ruining the view of the of the 400 dollar a month apartment, and if he didn't do it he would have to move. He thought he was full of shit. So 3 days later he was given a notice to vacate. It was not because of rent, because that was given and he said he always paid the rent on time. The polack was just mad because he said jump, and he didn't ask how high?

The landlords have all the rights, because the attorneys run the city and that is where the money is. In a real city like New York, you have to take someone to court and go through a long process just to evict. Because an apartment is considered your home. As it supposivley is for anybody living in one. For an liberal city that voted an idiot like Patty Schorder in 24 years in a row. They give the individual no rights. With liberalism it's always for the good of the group, the individual does not matter. Communism is the extreme.

Yes, Washington DC has the highest number of attorneys per population and that place is an absolute disaster. Yes these yuppie Democrats have tried and still want to centralize this Nation so that is it's model. Because they know what is best for everyone else. Because someone told them they are the best and brightest. With the Republicans they say if your state is not "compassionate enough" move to another one. There is not escaping liberals?

Do you want your state to look like DC? Remember there are still some Democrats in power. And your voting against them could put a few 100,000 poor defensless attorneys and buearcrats out of office that are "taking care of you." Something your state is incapable of.

-- W (wwils12@netzero.com), October 08, 2004.

The topic of the thread was the arrests at the Republican Convention in New York. People being harrassed and arrested by the police because they had the audacity to speak out against the government. Would you like to try to defend that, or do you not want to admit that our wonderfully benevolent government is wrong?

-- Anti-bush (Comrade_bleh@hotmail.com), October 08, 2004.