Report: NYPD mishandled protests
Findings point to excessive force, mass arrests during summer
A city oversight agency on Friday sharply criticized the New York City Police Department’s handling of protests during the summer, finding that the police were undertrained, were unprepared and had engaged in “excessive enforcement” that only heightened tensions with demonstrators.
In a 111-page report, the city ’s Department of Investigation determined that some police officers used aggressive tactics that violated the First Amendment rights of protesters as the department made mass arrests during the demonstrations, which followed the death of George Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police.
The report also criticized Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Police Department for taking actions that exacerbated already fraught tensions with protesters, who gathered by the thousands in May and June to protest police brutality and racism. More than 2,000 people were arrested, most of them while protesting peacefully.
“Some police officers engaged in actions that were, at a minimum, unprofessional and, at worst, unjustified excessive force or abuse of authority,” the report said.
“But the problems went beyond poor judgment or misconduct by some individual officers,” it went on. “The department itself made a number of key errors or omissions that likely escalated tensions, and certainly contributed to both the perception and the reality that the department was suppressing rather than facilitating lawful First Amendment assembly and expression.”
The mayor, in an unusual videotaped statement released after the report was made public, expressed regret over his handling of the protests.
“I read this report and I agree with it,” de Blasio said in the statement. “It makes very clear we’ve got to do something different, and we’ve got to do something better.
“I look back with remorse,” the mayor added. “I wish I had done better. I want everyone to understand that. And I’m sorry I didn’t do better.”
For months, de Blasio and his police commissioner, Dermot F. Shea, have defended the police department’s conduct during the protests, arguing that most officers showed restraint and that incidents of abuse or brutality were limited to a small number of problematic officers.
But the report chastised the entire Police Department for its tactics and strategies in handling the protests, saying the city “lacked a clearly defined strategy tailored to respond to the large-scale protests of police and policing.”
Police officials, however, pushed back, telling agency investigators during their probe that they believed the department’s response was adequate and that they would not have done much differently.
“I don’t quite know what to make of that,” Margaret Garnett, commissioner for the Department of Investigations, told reporters Friday. “I hope the department is more self-critical and self-reflective than those statements reflect.”
Police officials were surprised by the size and intensity of protests, the report said, and did not deploy enough officers in the early days of the demonstrations. They also relied too often on aggressive “disorder control” tactics and methods, which “exacerbated confrontations between police and protesters, rather than de-escalating tensions.”
Patrick J. Lynch, president of the Police Benevolent Association, the city ’s largest police union, said the report confirmed his contention that the department had dispatched officers to protests with no plan, strategy or support and asked them to handle “unrest that was fundamentally different from any of the thousands of demonstrations that police officers successfully protect every single year.”
“Nearly 400 police officers were injured — struck with bricks, bottles, fire extinguishers and folding chairs — because of the mixed messages emanating from City Hall and Albany,” Lynch said. “No amount of new training or strategizing will help while politicians continue to undermine police officers and embolden those who create chaos on our streets.”
The report recommended, among other steps, that the Police Department create a separate unit to oversee demonstrations that would work closely with community affairs officers who are specially trained to facilitate interaction between the public and police.
The report also said the department should reevaluate the use of specialized units that played a central role in the protests — the Strategic Response Group and the Disorder Control Unit — which are trained to handle terrorist attacks, riots and other serious threats.
It also recommended that the department give all patrol officers more training in how to best interact with protesters and put rules in its patrol guide for policing protests that would give greater emphasis to protecting freedom of speech.
At a news conference Friday, Shea said he would incorporate the recommendations into the department’s training and policies, calling them “logical and thoughtful.”