‘Epidemic of brutality’ as NYPD enforce lockdown
IT WAS the first warm weekend of spring, and hundreds of sun-deprived New Yorkers descended on Brooklyn’s Prospect Park to soak up the rays.
“Have a nice day,” the smiling policeman said as he handed out masks last weekend. “And be safe.”
Just a few miles away in the Bronx, a borough with a majority black and Hispanic population, the scene could not have been more different.
Officers, with no masks to distribute, patrolled the usually popular St Mary’s Park, warning people to stay apart or face being thrown out. As a result, the park – and many of the others in the borough – was left virtually empty.
New York police have been given new powers to enforce social distancing measures to try to contain the deadliest outbreak in the US, but have been accused of wielding them unevenly.
Record numbers of arrests in lowerincome communities, which have found it harder to distance and stay at home, have shone an uncomfortable spotlight on what some see as the force’s long-standing racial prejudices.
Some 125 arrests related to Covid-19 have been made since the city went into lockdown in mid-march, according to New York Police Department (NYPD) figures – 117 of whom were African-american or Latino, and more than a third of whom were from the Bronx.
“Why are sunbathers who violate social distancing guidelines treated one way and young men in certain communities another?” asked Hakeem Jeffries, who represents the diverse Eighth Congressional District of New York.
He was referring to the NYPD’S figures, but also “disturbing” videos. In one viral video, a mother is filmed being violently arrested in front of her child as she tries to enter a subway station.
In another, bystander Donni Wright is seen by an officer loitering near the scene of an arrest. The officer pulls him down to the ground, kneels on his neck and handcuffs him, accusing him of having a “fighting stance”.
Mr Wright, and his lawyer, Sanford Rubenstein, see an underlying prejudice in the NYPD’S policing.
“There has been an epidemic in police brutality in the enforcement of social distancing and the failure to wear masks,” said Mr Rubenstein.
He said there appeared to be a pattern of people of colour being stopped for alleged social distancing infractions then arrested on other low-level charges like obstructing governmental administration or disorderly conduct.
“[New York mayor Bill] de Blasio ran on a platform of stopping the discriminatory stop-and-frisk programme, yet under his administration we appear to have a new stop and frisk,” Mr Rubenstein told The Daily Telegraph.
“He promised to end our endemic race problem, but look where we are now.”