The New York Attorney General sued the New York Police Department (NYPD) on Thursday over the uniformed treatment of anti-racial injustice protesters last spring that would be part of a long-standing pattern of abuse. inadequate training, supervision and discipline.
Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit includes dozens of examples of alleged misconduct during the spring demonstrations following the police murder of George Floyd, including the use of pepper spray and batons on protesters, trapping protesters with a technique called “kettling” and arresting doctors and legal observers.
“We found a deeply disturbing and illegal pattern of practices that the NYPD used in response to these largely peaceful protests,” James said at a news conference announcing the lawsuit.
James, a Democrat, was tasked by Governor Andrew Cuomo with investigating whether New York police officers used excessive force to quell the riots and enforce Mayor Bill de Blasio’s night curfew. The prosecutor issued a preliminary report in July citing a “clear break in trust between the police and the public.”
“No one is above the law, not even the people in charge of enforcing the law,” the prosecutor wrote in a message on social networks announcing the lawsuit.
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James seeks reforms that include the appointment of a monitor to oversee the NYPD’s police tactics in future protests and a court order declaring that the policies and practices the department used during the protests were illegal.
The federal court lawsuit named the city, de Blasio, Police Commissioner Dermot Shea and Department Chief Terence Monahan as defendants.
James criticized de Blasio for saying that the use of the “kettling” (cornering protesters) was justified and Shea for saying that the NYPD “had a plan that was executed almost without problems” when aggressive officers cracked down on the protesters. protesters June 4 in the Bronx.
In June, at the height of the protests, de Blasio was accused of misleading the city when he told reporters that he personally did not see “any use of force surrounding the peaceful protests,” even after officers had been captured on video moving protesters without provocation and beating them with truncheons.
De Blasio said he met with James on Wednesday and they share a goal of pushing for important police reforms, such as implementing the recommendations of previous reports on the response to protests by the NYPD. De Blasio, also a Democrat, said, however, that he did not agree that a lawsuit was the solution.
“A judicial process and the added bureaucracy of a federal monitor will not accelerate this work,” de Blasio said. “There is no time to lose and we will keep moving forward.”
The NYPD did not immediately comment on the lawsuit.
The chief of the city’s largest police union blamed a “failure of New York City’s leadership” for dispatching officers “to unprecedented protests and violent police riots without any plan, no strategy, and no support. “.
“They should be forced to answer for the ensuing chaos, instead of pointing fingers at police officers in the streets and ignoring criminals who attacked us with bricks and firebombs,” said Police Benevolence Association president Pat Lynch.
Mark Winston Griffith, spokesman for the advocacy group Communities United for Police Reform, applauded the lawsuit, saying: “NYPD violence against protesters is a long-standing problem and is a credit to Attorney General James who is using the power of his office to challenge the systematic lack of accountability for this violence. “
James’s lawsuit is the second major legal action stemming from the NYPD’s handling of the protests.
In October, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Legal Aid Society sued the city on behalf of protesters who say they have been assaulted and abused by police.
A civil rights organization and a city watchdog have also criticized the department’s actions.
Human Rights Watch released a report in November on the crackdown in the Bronx, and the city’s inspector general released a report in December determining that the New York Police Department had been surprised by the size of the protests and had resorted to aggressive tactics that fueled tensions and stifled freedom of expression.
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