Videos conflict with police claim on NYC protests

Assertion department used restraint at odds with review

NEW YORK — It was two hours after curfew on the sixth night of protests against police brutality in New York City.

An officer in Brooklyn pushed a protester so hard that she fell backward on the pavement. Then he shoved someone on a bicycle and picked up and body-slammed a third person into the street.

Nearby, a man fell running from the police. Officers swarmed him and beat him with batons. A commanding officer, in his white-shirted uniform, joined the fray and stepped on the man’s neck.

All of it was caught on video. In fact, The New York Times found more than 60 videos that show the police using force on protesters during the first 10 days of demonstrations in the city after the death of George Floyd.

A review of the videos, shot by protesters and journalists, suggests that many of the police attacks, often led by high-ranking officers, were not warranted.

A video of five or 10 or 30 seconds does not tell the whole story, of course. It does not depict what happened before the camera started rolling. It is unclear from the videos, for instance, what the officers’ intentions were or why protesters were being arrested or told to move.

But the Police Department’s patrol guide says officers may use “only the reasonable force necessary to gain control or custody of a subject.” Force, policing experts say, must be proportionate to the threat or resistance at hand at the moment it is applied.

In instance after instance, the police are seen using force on people who do not appear to be resisting arrest or posing an immediate threat to anyone.

Police Commissioner Dermot F. Shea has maintained that misconduct during the protests was confined to “isolated cases” and that officers were confronted with violence by protesters.

He noted that during the first few days of demonstrations, people looted businesses, burned police cars and attacked officers with bricks, bottles and in one case a fire extinguisher, prompting Mayor Bill de Blasio to impose an 8 p.m. curfew.

“I think the officers used an incredible amount of restraint in terms of allowing people to vent,” Shea said on June 22. “I am proud of their performance in policing these protests, ending the riots and upholding the rule of law.”

Yet for just about each viral moment that emerged from the protests — officers violently shoving a woman to the ground or beating a cyclist who seemed to be doing nothing more than trying to cross the street — The Times turned up multiple examples of similar behavior.

The police responded to words with punches and pepper spray.

Officers charged into peaceful crowds and pushed people to the ground.

Sometimes, they appeared to lash out at random.

Devora Kaye, the Police Department’s assistant commissioner for public information, declined repeated requests to review the full set of videos provided by The Times and to explain the use of force in them.

She reiterated that “isolated incidents” of misconduct were being addressed, noted that four officers had already been disciplined, and said that the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau was investigating 51 cases of use of force during the protests.

“The NYPD has zero tolerance for inappropriate or excessive use of force,” she wrote, “but it is also critical to review the totality of the circumstances that lead to interactions where force is used.”

The police said that nearly 400 officers were injured during the protests, and that 132 of the more than 2,500 people arrested reported injuries, but that they did not have records of injured people who were not arrested. Protesters have described and documented at least five broken or fractured bones and four concussions.

When presented with the videos collected by The Times, Kapil Longani, counsel to de Blasio, said, “These incidents are disturbing and New Yorkers deserve a full accounting of these matters and access to a transparent disciplinary process.”

But he cautioned that the police disciplinary system needed time to carry out thorough investigations.

“To conclude that these officers or any American committed a crime without due process is inconsistent with the fundamental fairness that underlies our judicial system,” Longani said.

The Police Benevolent Association, the union that represents most New York Police Department officers, declined to comment on the videos.

The episodes in the videos The Times reviewed were spread across 15 neighborhoods in three boroughs. Several videos each were taken June 3 in Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn and on June 4 in Mott Haven in the Bronx, when officers “kettled” protesters into tight spaces and then beat them with batons.

Scott Hechinger, a public defender for nearly a decade in Brooklyn, said he found it striking that being filmed by crowds of protesters did not seem to inhibit some officers’ conduct.

“That the police were able and willing to perform such brazen violence when surrounded by cellphone cameras and when the whole world was watching at this moment more than any other, underscores how police feel and know they will never be held to account in any meaningful way even for the most egregious acts of violence,” Hechinger said.

Many of the videos show violence led by officers in white shirts, signaling a rank of lieutenant or higher.

In Manhattan on June 2, one commander shoved a protester and another pulled her down by the hair.

A civil rights lawyer with the legal aid group the Bronx Defenders, Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, said she saw violations of constitutional rights in nearly all the videos, including the rights to free speech and due process.

“The primary question is whether the force is reasonable, but you have to remember, if they’re not arresting someone, they shouldn’t be using any force,” Borchetta said.

The protests, and the outcry over the policing of them, have already led to changes. State legislators overturned a law that kept police discipline records secret and New York City cut its police budget and broadened a ban on chokeholds. Last week, New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, called for an independent commission to permanently oversee the Police Department.

But acts of force by the police are still being caught on video, more than six weeks into the protests.

Axel Hernandez, a high school teacher in New York City who on June 3 filmed an officer throwing someone down by the neck, said he felt it was important to continue to keep watch over the police.

“Part of the reason we’re out here is because they were on George Floyd’s neck,” said Hernandez, 30. “This is exactly why we are protesting in the first place.”