Frank Franklin II/AP Photo
Protesters take a knee on Flatbush Avenue in front of New York City police officers during a solidarity rally for George Floyd, June 4, 2020, in Brooklyn, New York.
NEW YORK – Shortly after 10 p.m. Thursday evening, several hundred people left the Barclays Center in central Brooklyn, the culmination of another long day of borough-wide protests. Minutes later, as the march snaked through the streets of Fort Greene, the NYPD notified activists that the city’s curfew was now in place. The announcement itself, which was made once and could easily have been missed, was arbitrary. The order technically went into effect at 8 p.m., more than two hours earlier.
But because the curfew here functions as little more than a pretext to give police carte blanche to arrest protesters at will once the sun goes down, the announcement was mainly a signal that the officers were about to escalate the otherwise calm situation. They did not disappoint. Police escorting the demonstrators determined they were no longer allowed to march in the street, and began forcing the activists to the sidewalk by shoving them with their hands and with outstretched batons.
As the march rounded the corner of Washington Avenue and Fulton Street, an officer wearing a white shirt, signifying a high-ranking officer, bludgeoned an activist several times with his baton. The man had been walking his bike on the sidewalk when the officer rushed him. “The fuck did I do?” he asked repeatedly, before being surrounded by police. “I didn’t do anything!”
Moments later, a throng of police shoved reporter Nick Pinto, on assignment for Gothamist and clearly displaying official credentials, onto a pile of trash bags. When he stood up, another officer shoved him back to the ground. A video I recorded of the incident has received more than 180,000 views.
Back in the street, officers charged the crowd from behind. I didn’t witness any acts of vandalism or see any projectiles thrown at police prior to their rushing the crowd. The provocation appeared to be entirely on the part of the NYPD.
Several dozen activists rushed, invited, to the stoops and concrete front yards of two apartment buildings on Washington Avenue to escape the police. The rest of the march was kettled in the street as lines of police approached from the front and rear. The scene was temporarily reminiscent of a standoff from earlier in the week in Washington, D.C., where demonstrators sought refuge from police in the house of Rahul Dubey.
In this instance, the NYPD chose to de-escalate, allowing the marchers who were trapped on all sides by officers to leave the area 20 at a time. Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Councilmember Brad Lander were with the marchers, and helped negotiate the dispersal. After the street emptied out, several police officers hugged one another the way athletes might after a game.
THE BROOKLYN MARCH wasn’t the only instance of police violence in New York City that day. Police made aggressive arrests throughout the boroughs, including in the Bronx, where cops surrounded protesters and began arresting them right at 8 p.m. They also arrested at least one legal observer.
Two nights earlier, the first night of the 8 p.m. curfew, several hundred activists were trapped on the Manhattan Bridge for about two hours. I was among them, and can attest that the marchers were nonconfrontational with the police at every step. Cops allowed the protesters to walk onto the bridge after a brief standoff on the Brooklyn side, only to be met with a line of officers preventing them from exiting into Manhattan. After an hour of waiting, I and several others walked back to the Brooklyn side, only to see a line of cops at the base. An activist warned that they had just arrested someone trying to leave, and although I wasn’t able to confirm it, the warning was entirely plausible.
To attest to the arbitrariness of the curfew enforcement, the crowd I was with was allowed to leave the bridge via jumping down to the bike path back on the Manhattan side. The drop from the roadway to the path is not far, but several marchers were nervous and initially resisted making it. The police ultimately allowed the remaining trapped marchers to disperse from the roadway.
On Thursday afternoon, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, both Democrats, praised the NYPD for their handling of the protests. “I have not seen the videos that you referred to or seen those accounts, but if there is anything that needs to be reviewed, it will be,” de Blasio said, while praising the cops for their “restraint.” Cuomo was asked during his press conference about videos showing cops “bludgeoning peaceful protesters in New York City with batons as they were enforcing the curfew.” After calling the question “a little offensive” and a “hyper-partisan rhetorical attack,” Cuomo added, “They don’t do that.” But there’s video evidence of the police actions.
Protesters across the nation are demanding that city and state governments defund the police. The policy, unthinkable two weeks ago, is gaining traction in Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed by Officer Derek Chauvin. Los Angeles has agreed to a nominal cut to next year’s police budget.
In New York, the response from the mayor and governor to well-documented police violence shows that the police here operate as an autonomous militia. The department as it exists right now is not subject to civilian control. Even if de Blasio and Cuomo wanted to rein in officers’ behavior, which it’s not at all clear that they do, it’s uncertain if they’d be able to.
What the city is left with, then, is a curfew that is entirely discretionary and selectively enforced. Bodegas and corner stores are open. You can go for a run in Prospect Park. The curfew is designed to criminalize anti-racist protest under the guise of maintaining public order, and that’s how it’s being implemented.
