[SusanSazzios]

Group Says NYPD Lying About GOP Arrests
By TOM HAYS, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK - A civil liberties group accused police Wednesday of lying about the circumstances surrounding the arrests of hundreds of protesters during the Republican National Convention.

In a letter to police and prosecutors, the New York Civil Liberties Union demanded a review of cases brought against protesters arrested on Aug. 31, 2004, at demonstrations near the World Trade Center site and Union Square.

"We are concerned that false police statements may have tainted hundreds of cases of people arrested at the two largest mass arrests during the convention," wrote the group's attorney, Christopher Dunn.

City law officials have said the arrests were justified.

The accusations stem from a tense standoff in 2004 between police and the tens of thousands of demonstrators at the GOP convention, where President Bush accepted his party's nomination for a second term.

While demonstrations were mostly peaceful, sporadic clashes between police and protesters resulted in more than 1,800 arrests, mostly on misdemeanor charges like obstructing governmental administration.

Up to 10,000 officers were deployed at the four-day event — a show of force the civil liberties group called overkill and a threat to free speech. Two pending federal lawsuits claim most of the arrests were illegal.

The group's letter cited sworn statements by officers who said they were told by a supervisor, Deputy Inspector James Essig, that the protesters near Union Square had been warned to stop blocking traffic and disperse before the arrests began. About 400 people ended up in custody, including some rounded up with a mesh net.

During a deposition earlier this month, Essig testified that "at no time did he give an order to disperse nor did anyone else give such an order to disperse," Dunn wrote.

The group contends the contradictory statements are grounds to dismiss cases and discipline police officers.

A spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said prosecutors "have been reviewing these arrests as the situations merit, and of course we'll continue to do that."

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said police acted properly.

[Fegasderty]

March 23, 2006

Police Commander Accused of Lying About Arrests During Convention

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
A civil liberties group accused the Police Department yesterday of providing false information used to prosecute hundreds of people arrested in protest marches during the 2004 Republican National Convention, and said that information might have tainted the arrests.

The New York Civil Liberties Union said that deposition testimony from a police inspector who oversaw arrests during the convention flatly contradicted criminal complaints against the demonstrators sworn to by the same inspector.

But police officials defended the arrests yesterday, saying that they were "appropriate," and that the inspector's testimony had been taken out of context.

The deposition was taken two weeks ago, on March 7 and March 9, as part of litigation in Federal District Court in Manhattan filed by scores of demonstrators who claim that they were subjected to false arrest and that their civil rights were violated during the convention, held in August and September 2004

In the deposition, the police inspector, James Essig, was asked whether he or any other member of the Police Department had asked demonstrators gathered near Union Square on Aug. 31, 2004, to disperse. He replied, "No," according to a transcript of the deposition released by the civil liberties group.

Asked whether he or any other police officer warned the demonstrators that they would be arrested if they did not leave the block, Inspector Essig, who was a deputy inspector at the time, again said, "No."

Nearly 400 people were arrested near Union Square that day on charges of disorderly conduct and parading without a permit. They spent hours in jail — many up to 48 hours — before appearing in court.

The inspector's answers are important, civil liberties lawyers said, because for the arrests to be legal, the police had to have found that the demonstrators were blocking traffic, and had to have given them fair warning to disperse or be arrested. And that is exactly what the criminal complaints filed by prosecutors say happened.

The complaints, which were sworn to in writing by Inspector Essig on Sept. 1, said that the police warned the group "that they were blocking vehicular traffic, had to disperse and would be arrested if they did not."

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the civil liberties group, said yesterday that the contradiction between Inspector Essig's sworn statement in 2004 and his answers during the deposition two weeks ago showed that the criminal complaints were tainted and should be thrown out.

In a letter to Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, Ms. Lieberman called for prosecutors to review the complaints.

Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Morgenthau, said the complaints would be reviewed.

But Paul J. Browne, deputy police commissioner, said the arrests were appropriate and that the civil liberties union was using selective quotations from Inspector Essig's deposition to suggest that he had lied.

Mr. Brown pointed to other parts of the transcript, in which Inspector Essig was asked whether he told the group that it was blocking traffic, and he replied: "I don't recall specifically what I said. What I said was 'Stop,' or other words to that effect."

Asked whether he gave an order to disperse, the inspector said, "I attempted to," before being questioned further by the civil liberties union's lawyer and saying he did not.

But Christopher Dunn, the civil liberties group's associate legal director, said that Inspector Essig, when pressed, was unambiguous in his testimony. " 'No' is about as clear as it gets," Mr. Dunn said



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

[Grzqbmhy]

One member of the NYPD, on duty in Brooklyn last week, might want to start looking for other employment:

[usatramadolusa]

Can't bear to click on this.

[Virosponna]

It's damning of the cop who said it, but not something that will give you nightmares (maybe no, anyway).

[ImapFidaarram]

I'm sensing evil just looking at the picture.

[chppjdf]

What the hell did I just watched?

[TimoDassss]

The group that was interacting with the cop is an Arts Collective -- specializing in film + vid, including documentation.

[ThekvandoVideo]

Story at The Agitator. The group is the Glass Bead Collective.

About Glass Bead Collective

Glassbead Collective (GBC), based in New York City, brings together individuals from diverse academic and professional backgrounds including video art, film, theater, architecture, photography, music, mathematics, fine arts and philosophy to create works which re-contextualize culture and the world in which we find ourselves today. GBC was founded in 2002 with a multimedia theatrical performance of Jean Paul Sartre's No Exit.

We have since produced various live art events and films experimenting with a multi-disciplinary approach to contemporary issues (mixing visual and literary narratives in real time) as well as created live visuals for groups such as Billionaires for Bush, The War Resisters, Brooklyn Media Lab, GRACE (Global Resource Action Center for the Environment) at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival among others. We have recently created a piece for the WORD_and_WORK section of Volume No. 9 of ART.ES, a Spanish art magazine published in Madrid.

[varrozans]

I hope that cameraman is/was quick, insured and armed or he may have more than a bad night on the job!

[krek-sikUp]

Police Demographics Unit Casts Shadows From Past

By SAM ROBERTS

Ethnic and racial profiling by the authorities. Concerns about the true loyalties of Americans whose roots are elsewhere. Tracking where New Yorkers of potentially suspect racial, ethnic or religious backgrounds live.

When it comes to the question of how the New York Police Department behaves, those steeped in local history might ask: What’s new?

News reports that the Police Department has created a demographics unit to monitor, as Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly explained, “a lot of different communities,” have provoked alarm and criticism among civil liberty advocates who consider the program as unfairly placing entire groups of people, particularly Muslims, under a shadow of suspicion.

While Mr. Kelly told a City Council committee recently that information was compiled on the basis of geography, not ethnicity, concerns were expressed that the Police Department was singling out Muslim New Yorkers.

But the unit also echoes a similar effort nearly a century ago.

(see article to zoom in on maps)




New York State Archives
In 1919, the New York Police Department and the State Police mapped the locations
of ethnic populations for a sweeping investigation aimed at rooting out socialists,
communists and anarchists.

In 1919, a legislative committee headed by State Senator Clayton R. Lusk conducted a sweeping investigation into organizations and individuals suspected of being socialists, communists or anarchists. Some people were caught red-handed. Others suffered guilt by association. Many, including Emma Goldman, a well-known anarchist activist, were deported to Russia. So-called “hyphenates” — Irish and German New Yorkers, in particular — were suspect.

In the course of its investigation, the committee commissioned maps prepared by the New York Police Department and the State Police identifying neighborhoods in which certain immigrants and their offspring predominated. There was no attempt to disguise the maps as “geographic” or to conceal their purpose. They were clearly labeled “ethnic map,” prepared under the direction of a deputy attorney general for Mr. Lusk’s Joint Legislative Committee Investigating Seditious Activities.

Mr. Lusk was a Republican from upstate Cortland who eventually became the Senate majority leader. He later likened the New Deal to socialism and communism.

The maps identified enclaves of Germans, Irish, Russian Jews, Austro-Hungarians, Syrians and blacks, among other groups.

Mr. Lusk addressed a patriotic rally in Carnegie Hall by the American Defense Society at which John R. Rathom, the editor of The Providence Journal, complained about English immigrants who declined to become naturalized citizens, and then took a broad swipe at Irish newcomers.





“There are hundreds of thousands of Irish in this country who are not loyal, not American and never will be American,” said Mr. Rathom, who often warned of the dangers of Bolshevism.
The maps survive in the state archives in Albany, where they were rediscovered by Christopher Finan when he was researching his 2003 biography of Alfred E. Smith, who was governor when Mr. Lusk was mounting his campaign.

Mr. Finan, who is the president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, said the maps were used by the legislative committee “to justify a series of laws violating First Amendment rights” — loyalty tests and other provisions — which Mr. Smith vetoed in 1920 as striking at “the very foundation of one of the most cardinal institutions of our nation: the fundamental right of the people to enjoy full liberty in the domain of idea and speech.”

Mr. Finan said of the latest effort by the Police Department, “This mapping exercise is as silly — and dangerous — today as it was in 1919.”

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...ows-from-past/

[XVzrlWIv]

I wonder if anyone would ever take on this project. With a camera in hand, you look for incidents of cops behaving badly, such as:
- Running red lights with no cause without lights or sirens on
- Parking in active lane of traffic to go into coffee shop
- Disobeying traffic signs
- Parking in front of fire hydrants
- Littering
etc...

Then you identify the cops and put it all on youtube. The ultimate gravy would be catching that same cop charging someone with the offense he just committed. I see cops doing whatever they want all the time in their cars, sometimes dangerously so

The bigger question is, who polices the police??

[drycleden]

Traffic Agent With Unpaid Tickets Is Arrested Over Tow
By ANDY NEWMAN

Updated, 6:42 p.m. | A traffic agent who owed more than $450 in parking tickets was arrested Monday morning in Brooklyn, accused of trying to stop her S.U.V. from being towed, the authorities said.

The agent, Olatakumbo Erinosho, 39, was charged with obstructing governmental administration, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, the police said.
City marshals went to Greene Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant before dawn on Monday to tow Ms. Erinosho’s 2007 Cadillac Escalade, the police said. But she “interfered with and resisted their lawful efforts to seize her personal vehicle” and “subsequently resisted efforts by police who were summoned by marshals to arrest her,” Paul J. Browne, the chief Police Department spokesman, said in a statement.

Ms. Erinosho has been a traffic enforcement agent for eight years, the police said. The job’s duties include directing traffic and writing tickets.


http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...-over-car-tow/

[viepedorlella]

I think I just felt the earth move......

[Assauraarguck]

Naah... traffic agents don't get the same accord as other NYC Police personel. When it happens to a cop, I will be impressed.

[Wachearex]

uh oh ...

The NYPD Tapes Confirmed

The report police hid for nearly two years that corroborates
a Voice investigation — and vindicates a whistle-blower the NYPD tried to destroy

VILLAGE VOICE
March 7, 2012

In 2010, The Village Voice produced a five-part series, the "NYPD Tapes," about a cop who secretly taped his fellow New York Police Department officers.

For more than two years, Adrian Schoolcraft secretly recorded every roll call at the 81st Precinct in Brooklyn and captured his superiors urging police officers to do two things in order to manipulate the "stats" that the department is under pressure to produce: Officers were told to arrest people who were doing little more than standing on the street, but they were also encouraged to disregard actual victims of serious crimes who wanted to file reports.

Arresting bystanders made it look like the department was efficient, while artificially reducing the amount of serious crime made the commander look good.

In October 2009, Schoolcraft met with NYPD investigators for three hours and detailed more than a dozen cases of crime reports being manipulated in the district. Three weeks after that meeting—which was supposed to have been kept secret from Schoolcraft's superiors—his precinct commander and a deputy chief ordered Schoolcraft to be dragged from his apartment and forced into the Jamaica Hospital psychiatric ward for six days.

In the wake of our series, NYPD commissioner Raymond Kelly ordered an investigation into Schoolcraft's claims. By June 2010, that investigation produced a report that the department has tried to keep secret for nearly two years.

The Voice has obtained that 95-page report, and it shows that the NYPD confirmed Schoolcraft's allegations. In other words, at the same time that police officials were attacking Schoolcraft's credibility, refusing to pay him, and serving him with administrative charges, the NYPD was sitting on a document that thoroughly vindicated his claims ...

[skupaemauto]

Nice.

Great the way a few (really) bad apples can make life hell for those that really want to do their job.

This should make ALL NYC cops' jobs MUCH easier now with all the respect that this professional behavior will earn them.

[Smabeabumjess]

I remember when the original Voice article came out. No one cared. Is this report going to change anything? Not bloody likely. The NYPD will just keep doing what it's been doing.

[casinobonusese]

An article in a newspaper isn't at the same level as the actual internal NYPD report, which was suppressed.

This comes out at a bad time for the NYPD and its commissioner. It reinforces other allegations of police misconduct. Crime statistics are a big political issue, something Bloomberg has made a centerpiece of his administration. Not a coincidence that he's had nothing to say on the matter so far.

[yarita]

IOW, few listen to a single Voice, but when things have a bit more meat to them, you are more likely to hear a few more in the chorus.

This is now a story that OTHER news agencies may pick up due to its possible connections and DEFINITE interest from the public...