#NYPD response on George Floyd protest violated ‘human rights’: report

The NYPD’s June curfew crackdown on protestors in Mott Haven violated “international human rights” — and possibly US civil rights — as one of the department’s “most aggressive and abusive responses” to rallies during the George Floyd demonstrations, a scathing new report said.

Police in the Bronx neighborhood trapped more than 300 protestors with a tactic called “kettling” until the clock ticked past the 8 p.m. curfew on June 4 — then unleashed a brutal attack, “whaling their batons, beating people from car tops, shoving them down to the ground and firing pepper spray in their faces,” Human Rights Watch said in its report released Wednesday.

The forceful breakup by police came at about 10 minutes after the curfew, which was imposed just days earlier amid unrest in the city following the death of George Floyd in police custody.

“The New York City police blocked people from leaving before the curfew and then used the curfew as an excuse to beat, abuse, and arrest people who were protesting peacefully,” said Ida Sawyer, acting crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch who also co-authored the report.

“It was a planned operation with no justification that could cost New York taxpayers millions of dollars.”

The report, Kettling’ Protesters in the Bronx: Systemic Police Brutality and Its Costs in the United States, was based on the accounts of 81 protestors and 155 videos from the rally as well as legal documents and 19 other interviews with members, lawyers, activists, and city officials.

The NYPD would not sit for an interview with the group, it said.

“We take strong exception to the subjective characterization of our police actions to maintain public order as ‘a planned assault,’” an NYPD spokeswoman said of the report.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner Dermot Shea defended the police action the day after and praised Chief of Department Terence Monahan for his plan.

Shea justified the forceful breakup on the demonstration with a startling narrative of protestors armed with a gun, gasoline and weapons to “tear down society.”

But that account was quickly debunked — with cops confirming that no weapons or gasoline was found at the protest.

The police response was compared to the crackdown at the Republican National Convention in 2004, which led to $36 million paid out to settle lawsuits. Monahan, who was then a deputy chief, was the center of both responses.

At least 61 people at the rally in June were injured and were not treated for hours, with some suffering a black eyes, lost teeth, and broken noses or digits, the group said.

“As protesters cried out – some with blood dripping down their faces – the police began to arrest them,” the report reads. “They forced people to sit on the street with their hands zip-tied behind their backs, at times so tight that their hands went numb.”

Police also arrested legal observers, saying “Legal Observers can be arrested.… They are good to go!” according to the Human Rights Watch.

“Clearly identified medics and legal observers were among those targeted, as police beat a number of them, detained them and obstructed their work,” according to the report.

The NYPD is likely to face 100 lawsuits from protestors and observers who have put in paperwork that they planned to sue the city, according to the group.