Matt Yglesias, who grew up in Manhattan, makes a sensible observation about the arrest of 700 Occupy Wall Street protesters who tried to walk to Brooklyn in the driving lanes of the Brooklyn Bridge Saturday:
Realistically, New York City is extremely vulnerable to the possibility of demonstrators disrupting bridge and tunnel traffic. Consequently, the NYPD needs to be extremely aggressive about dissuading people from adopting bridge-related protest tactics.
Lower Manhattan isn’t just a symbolic place for protesting—it’s also somewhere that people live and work, and people need to be able to get around, including by driving over the Brooklyn Bridge. Indeed, I got stuck in a nasty traffic jam on the FDR Drive on the east side of Manhattan around 4 PM on Saturday, caused by cars backing up onto the highway from the ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge. Illegally interfering with my and my fellow New Yorkers’ travels may lead to your arrest.
The complaints from the protesters about the arrests are baffling to me. Basically, they seem to be that the police didn’t stop people from walking in the road at the foot of the bridge, instead waiting until they were partway across and then arresting them. The New York Times quotes one protester saying, “It seemed completely permitted… There wasn’t a single policeman saying ‘don’t do this’.”
Let’s try this once again, slowly. The Brooklyn Bridge has a pedestrian walkway. Walking in the road is like walking on a freeway: illegal. The police don’t have any obligation to give you fair warning or physically stop you from entering the road; you should already know not to do it.
In any case, the police actually were announcing on bullhorns that people were not allowed to walk in the road. Christopher Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union confirms in the Times piece that these announcements were made, but notes that many of the protesters were too far back to hear the announcements, and were just following the crowd.
This defense amounts to: “I was just doing what the amorphous clot of people was doing. The amorphous clot implied that it was OK!” But alas, an amorphous clot does not have lawgiving power. If you follow an amorphous clot in doing something illegal, such as walking in the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge, you may get arrested.
It’s not that the NYPD can do no wrong. The Anthony Bologna incidents, involving apparently unprovoked uses of pepper spray, look indefensible to me. But the NYPD has every reason to insist that major roadways be kept free from unpermitted marchers, and, more broadly, to prevent a descent of the Financial District into anarchy. The protesters may be “Occupying Wall Street,” but they are not actually allowed to occupy the streets. A mass arrest—of people who, let’s not forget, were breaking the law—may be a good way of teaching these protesters to stay on the sidewalks and plazas.
That makes sense except they could have arrested the first 1 or 2 or 10 but not hurdled them like cattle there and then blamed them for being there. Thats obviously BS. Anywho, your opinion is paid for.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusethis is a revolution. if you dont like it join it..otherwise..I am glad you were inconvenienced. think about others and your country not just yourself.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseits not here to be pleasant.
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This is a video compiled by protestors. In this video, it DOES appear that police LED THE WAY onto the bridge (at about 42 seconds, that appears to be the roadway, not a "pedestrian walkway" and police are walking in FRONT of the crowd with all walking forward except the two facing backwards videotaping) but I am not familiar with the location, so I cannot say for sure that this is the case, even though it does appear to be so. If the people on the right are "on the roadway" - police seem oblivious to them, they don't even glance that way as they walk ahead....they DO appear to be looking back to make sure that protestors are following them though?
But if the police were the FRONT of the "amorphous clot" LEADING the way across the bridge and the FIRST ones that were "doing something illegal" - would you still feel that the protestors were in the wrong? Or would you instead feel (as the protestors do) that this was entrapment?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEntrapment? You have several cops with bullhorns announcing anyone staying on the bridge roadway will be arrested. The fact that a police officer was on the bridge filming the protesters is meaningless, it is simply a matter of collecting evidence. I did some protests in my youth, these protesters knew they were going to be arrested. The linking of arms, the sitting down, are all standard instructions. It is a pretyt safe bet they wished to be arrested because it makes better TV.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe linking arms and sitting down occurred after MULTIPLE arrests had already taken place, and police had ALREADY stopped them from continuing across the bridge (but well after they were ON it). This is clearly illustrated in multiple videos put out by protestors which show continuous streams of those same sections of the video (although it is NOT clear in the video by police - nicely cut together to show what they want to show).
The bull horn at the "foot of the bridge" is only visible in the officer's footage and it remains unclear if this is the people that they stopped (after everyone else was already on the bridge, escorted by police) and did NOT arrest, or if this was the FRONT of the march (prior to entering the bridge). It is convenient that the police video is ONLY close up and cuts in and out - but the protestors get the far shot....
I don't know ... you look at the two videos I posted and see if those are the same protestors in the front of the police video as are in the front of the march on the bridge in the videos by protestors. I admit I didn't analyze it very closely - but I see NO officer with a bull horn as the police are escorting the protestors on the bridge, and the guy holding his arms all still in the police video doesn't seem to be in the march on the bridge (but he might be - you tell me!)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is another video by protestors and this one does make it clear that police led the protest onto the walkway - at about 50 seconds, you can see the police ARE in fact leading the way (same scene as the earlier video - but from a further back perspective - making it clear that this is, in fact, the roadway that police are leading the way onto - AND it demonstrates that they are definitely the FRONT, and not following demonstrators....
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI don't know enough about the situation in New York, but in Chicago there is a class action (Vodak v. City of Chicago) pending in federal court against the City and the Police arising out of an Iraq War protest that seems similar.
In Chicago, the city had a practice of occasionally waiving the permit requirement for a demonstration. If the permit requirement was waived, what would ordinarily be illegal--marching down a major road en masse--would be a legal demonstration.
During this demonstration in 2003, protestors shut down traffic on Lake Shore Drive during rush hour and attempted to do the same on Michigan Avenue. The police arrested about 800 protestors trying to get through to Michigan. These folks are now suing the city alleging they were arrested without probable cause because the city's waiver of the permit requirement meant that what they were doing was perfectly legal unless and until the cops told them it wasn't and gave them an opportunity to disperse. The Seventh Circuit agreed (Dk 09-2768).
Something similar could be at issue in New York. If the city implicitly waived whatever permit requirements they have for marches by allowing the march to the bridge, they would have to give notice and an opportunity to disperse before conducting a mass arrest. New York's policies w/r/t demonstrations could be, and probably are, better than Chicago's were and than the above wouldn't apply.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe lawsuit has already been filed: External Link
"PCJ filed its 20-page case, Garcia v. Bloomberg (which you can read here), on behalf of five protesters who claim that, during their march from Zuccotti Park, NYPD officers led them and at least 700 others across the Brooklyn Bridge, prevented them from leaving, and "falsely" arrested them—all alleged Fourth Amendment violations. According to PCJ, the defendants "engaged in a premeditated, planned, scripted and calculated effort to sweep the streets of protestors and disrupt a growing protest movement in New York," and cites as evidence of premeditation the fact that the officers who led the crowd were all allegedly command officers. Also, cops who delivered commands used their bullhorns, but spoke softly enough so that protesters couldn't actually hear them over all the noise. PCJ believes the cops spoke "inaudibly" on purpose, and that the use of the bullhorns was all a "charade"—a way to justify the mass arrest without actually providing fair notice to most protesters, as required by the Constitution. In general, the NYPD enforces a "policy" of arresting people en masse without probable cause, PCJ asserts—and this is just the latest example.
In addition to citing alleged Fourth Amendment violations, PCJ's suit also claims a number of First Amendment violations. For example, one of the plaintiffs was allegedly told by an NYPD officer that the rationale behind the mass arrest was to keep them from continuing the demonstration. Another plaintiff was supposedly told by an officer that "next time you'll think twice about going out to protest." Such statements amount to "chilling" speech and are therefore unconstitutional, the suit says."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMarching in a road is called a parade. Without a parade permit, you'll be subject to arrest. Not hard to figure. When you set out to inconvenience others, you should not be surprised at the inconvenience of being arrested. Enjoy your temper tantrum.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo the police might have moved in a way that protestors followed, perhaps some were way in the back and didn't hear the bullhorn announcements. These are all factors to be considered by the prosecutor in prosecuting and the judge in adjudicating. Like they say, you might beat the rap but you can't beat the ride.
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