Arrests at GOP convention criticized
 

NEW YORK - One late August evening, Alexander Pincus pedaled his bicycle to the Second Avenue Deli to buy matzo ball soup, a pastrami-on-rye and potato latkes for his sweetheart, who was sick with a cold.

He would not return for 28 hours. As Pincus and a friend left the deli, they inadvertently walked into a police blockade and sweep of bicycle-riding protesters two days before the Republican National Convention began. "I asked an officer how I could get home," Pincus recalled. "He said, 'Follow me,' and we went a few feet and cops grabbed us. They handcuffed us and made us kneel for an hour."

Police carted Pincus to a holding cell topped with razor wire and held him for 25 hours without access to a lawyer. The floor was a soup of oil and soot, he said, and the cell had so few portable toilets that some people relieved themselves in the corner. Pincus said a shoulder was dislocated as police pulled back his arms to handcuff him. "Cops kept saying to us, 'This is what you get for protesting,' "said Pincus, whose account of his arrest is supported in part by deli workers and a time-stamped food receipt.

Pincus was one of 1,821 people arrested in police sweeps before and during the Republican convention, the largest number of arrests associated with any American major-party convention. At the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968, which unlike New York's was marked by widespread police brutality, cops made fewer than 700 arrests.

In the days after the convention, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly stated that "every NYPD officer did a great job." But interviews with state court officials, City Council representatives, prosecutors, protesters and civil libertarians -- and a review of videos of demonstrations -- point to many problems with the police performance. Officers often sealed off streets with orange netting and used motor scooters and horses to sweep up hundreds of protesters at a time, including many who appear to have broken no laws. In two cases, police commanders appeared to allow marches to proceed, only to order many arrests minutes later.

'Indiscriminate arrests'
Most of those arrested were held for more than two days without being arraigned, which a state Supreme Court judge ruled was a violation of legal guidelines. Defense attorneys predict a flood of civil lawsuits once protesters have settled the misdemeanor charges lodged against them.

"The overriding problem during the convention was the indiscriminate arrests . . . of people who did nothing wrong," Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said at a City Council hearing last week. "They were arrested because they were . . . participating in a lawful demonstration."

Police officials declined to talk about these problems last week, citing a pending court case. But the city's criminal justice coordinator, John Feinblatt, said in an interview that city lawyers tried to weed out the unjustly arrested and that the volume of arrests -- more than 1,100 on one day -- overwhelmed the police department. More broadly, Bloomberg and Kelly defended the vast majority of the arrests as justified and described holding cells as clean and humane.

Bloomberg, in interviews during convention week, said that protesters expected prisons to look like "Club Med." Kelly said police encountered other delays as they tried to find separate cells for a large number of female detainees.

The first mass arrests came three days before the Aug. 30 to Sept. 2 convention, when police swooped down on Critical Mass, a loosely knit collective of bicyclists who periodically flood city streets and slow traffic. Police usually tolerate the disruption, but that night officers arrested more than 200. Kelly told New York magazine that he wanted to send protesters a message.

The next few days were quiet, and a quarter-million-strong march went forward Aug. 29 without incident.

But the mood changed Aug. 31, when police made 1,128 arrests. Anarchists had pledged a day of resistance, blocking traffic. Police arrested hundreds, and civil liberties lawyers on the scene described most arrests as lawful.

But farther downtown on the same day, the War Resisters League, a decades-old pacifist group, was readying a peaceful march from Ground Zero to Madison Square Garden, where it intended to conduct a civil disobedience "die in."

A video provided by the New York Civil Liberties Union shows police commanders laying out the ground rules: As long as protesters did not block traffic, they would not get arrested during the walk north (No permit is required for a march on a sidewalk as long as protesters leave space for other pedestrians to pass). Within a block or two, however, the video shows marchers lined up on the sidewalk, far from an intersection, as a police officer announces on a bullhorn: "You're under arrest."

"They came with batons, bicycles, they came with netting," said the Rev.G. Simon Harak, a Jesuit priest. "The kind of forces you expect to be turned on terrorists was unleashed on us."

Police arrested 200 people, saying they had blocked the sidewalk.

About the same time Tuesday, several other groups of protesters started walking two abreast from Union Square, the city's historic protest soapbox, to Madison Square Garden. However, several demonstrators say -- and photographs show -- that police soon stopped them, asked them to raise their hands and arrested them.

Throughout the week, police also picked up dozens of people who appeared to have nothing to do with demonstrations, the New York Civil Liberties Union said. Among those swept up by police were several newspaper reporters, two women shopping at the Gap, a feeder company executive out for dinner with a friend, and Wendy Stefanelli, a costume designer with the TV show "Sex and the City," who was walking to get a drink with a friend.

Thus begins the 4th Reich!

This makes the McCarthy era seem relaxed. It is sad that this once great country has become a knee-jerk Facist state. In the end, it will be the taxpayers that will suffer. Imagine having to pay off all the lawsuits.

Several thousand people are being held in the U.S. without being tried! Bush has the power of Caesar. They have been declared enemy combatants.

Think of a future where the Supreme Court won't be able to protect us. It was a liberal Supreme Court that ended the McCarthy era. It was that same Supreme Court that ended segregation. It could be Bush that appoints the next 2 to 4 justices!

We are at a critical point in our history. Don't let things change for the worse. Stop the Christian Fascists before it is too late.

I just finished reading some additional stories from NYC newspaper websites. The mass arrest are a big scandal right now. It seems that most of the arrests were illegal since the arresting police officers didn't and couldn't differenciate between protestor and citizen. The local ACLU has alot of the arrests on videotape. Most of the people arrested were held passed the 24 hour rule established prior by the NY Supreme Court. The Mayor and the police were held in comtempt of court! Wow. This will be a huge lawsuit. Some 500 lawsuits have already been filed!

Imagine... Republican Mayor Bloomberg said on Aug. 16 that freedom of speech and protest was a "privilege" that could be taken if abused! Oh shit! All this was done so that the NYC wouldn't be embarrassed during Bush's visit! Sad, sad, sad.

There is a huge difference between a legal protest and a bunch of raving idiots.

I remember once thousands of people on bicycles shut down San Francisco during the commute rush hour to protest some cause or another. While I believe in the right to protest, you don't have the fucking right to shut down the Bay Bridge for six hours trapping commuters in the city.

Newsflash for idiots - if there is a protest where the protesters are all riding bicycles and your riding a bike, guess what - Your lumped in with a bunch of protesters.

No doubt there would be some Bush supporter defending this shit. Welcome to the era of modern day Naziism.

Hmmm... the New York Supreme Court declared the city in comtempt for violating people's rights. People were being arrested simply for walking and riding in their own neighborhood. Most of the people were peaceful...

Doesnt matter. Bushism is more important than human rights.

:(

The story that caught my eye was the teenage girl that didn't return home from a movie. They refused to let her call her father until she was "processed" many hours later; meanwhile the man was frantic trying to locate her, having no idea what may have happened. Imagine being scared your kid has been kidnapped or worse only to find out they were being held as a common criminal for just daring to go about their business while the president is in town.

As a German citizen I would urge every American to go to a libary and get a book on how the Nazis got to power 70 years ago. You will see a lot of things that you can observe in the US today.

STOP this before it is to late.

Gleichschaltung

So where is that fucking idiot with the bush banner in his sig? I would like what he pulls from his ass this time

I REALLY hope this story is either straight BS or at least an exaggeration. The Hitler analogy has been wearing thin up until now.

Every intelligent educated person sees the parallels between what Hitler said and did to create that atmosphere then, and that which is happening in America today; but unfortunately many here simply believe America can do no wrong (as strongly as Bush believes he was appointed by God).

How Hitler Became a Dictator

:thumbsup

You have brains !

Huh? you mean you are now arguing that the system works? That people have a voice and that officials are held accountable for their behavior?

Strange.

??? No.

Maybe i am missing something in all your guy's Bush = Hitler bullshit. Bush is an idiot. So far, only Boobmaster is the last one defending him of any American on this board.

How is one guy being arrested in an illegal protest any different than any other protest where people are arrested?

A guy rode his bike into the middle of the protest of people riding bikes... (blaming it on them for saying "hey come with us"). I am sorry... but i seriously doubt that a person with the brains and motor skills to ride a bike... had no idea what he was getting into.

If you dont want to be arrested... don't go where police are furiously arresting people... particularly in a city that watched two of the biggest buildings in the world crash into the street due to a terrorist attack during a political convention which even the most severely retarded person knows is an obvious terrorist target.. There is no way in hell that he did not know what he was doing given the security and police presence in the area.

No one cares about the facts and how much responsibility he bears ... OR EVEN IF HE IS FUCKING TELLING THE TRUTH.

No one was calling Clinton Hitler when people were rightfully getting their faces bashed in for being idiots and breaking the law (and VIOLENTLY so) at the WTO meeting in Seattle. I fail to see the difference.

To CamChicks:

Fuck you! To suggest that an entire nation of people and those who do not share your particularly paranoid and delusional view of the world is both stupid and uneducated is a direct reflection of your own ignorance and stupidity.

You are missing something. First of all it was more than one guy. Secondly it was the tactics the police used to arrest people that were apparently involved (and some not involved) in a legal protest. Thirdly the law was violated in regards to how long these people were held without representation. And last of all the mayor and police chief of NYC endorsed these actions.

I'm sorry you don't see the problem when almost 2000 people are arrested simply because they are anti-Bush.

And then you can sue the city for as much as you can get.

RocHard, it's called living in a free society.

Maybe the RNC shoulda just caged up all the protesters and kept them far away out of sight... ya know.. like the DNC did in Boston.

OPeople have a right to protest and other people have a right to walk on the streets, even if there is a protest happening at the same time.

It's called freedom and in a country that proudly says it's "Home of the brave, land of the free, it amazes me that so many advocate that citizens should sit in there homes in fear of arrest for going out and exercising this freedom.

Your fore fathers fought and died for the freedoms you enjoy yet are happy to see taken away. Freedom is a constant battle and must always be defended.

They didn't force anyone in there, and the only people in it were some right wing nuts ranting about Jesus.

How many people got arrested in Boston? How many protests did they break up elsewhere in the city?

You're quite funny, it's like you actually work for the Bush campaign. You feel the need to defend everything no matter how clearly you're wrong, and how stupid it makes you look.

If that kind of shit would have happened in canada the cops would already be suspended

Just a question. When Hitler came to power, were people allowed to sue city officials for violating their rights?

Just wondering. I've read a lot about German history and I don't remember that part.:2 cents:

Not sure about that but Germany did have a constitution that Hitler wiped his ass with. Sound familiar?

In case superbonzo missed Camchick's post, the day after the Reichstag fire Hitler released the Patriot ac, I mean, the ?For the Protection of the People and the State" decree. It allowed him to detain people indefinitely without trial, conduct searches without warrants, and not release the names of prisoners. Sound familiar?

Pretty sad when you have to search for ways that your leader is not like Hitler. :1orglaugh

I havent seen this on mainstream TV news yet. Not expecting to, just pointing out the obvious I suppose.
At any other time, I'm sure this would be "top story" material. Hopefully we can get back to worrying about things like this, or shark attacks or something mild.

Yep. Most people discount the Hitler comparison because Bush isnt exterminating a race of people. Do I believe Bush's goal is the same as Hitlers? No. But it is obvious to me that Bush uses a lot of the same tactics Hitler did to manipulate. And even though he may not want to exterminate a race, I do believe his ultimate goal is to completely control the US (and the rest of the world) with his Christian calling. And if it wasnt for his Saudi ties he may very well be thinking about ridding the planet of Muslims.

Mark my words, if another terrorist attack happens under Bush's watch we will be under martial law and the Bush backers will welcome it.

What is really "sad"...Richy boy...is foreign trash...such as your America hating self...to idiotically compare...the US government with the Nazi Party/Hilter. To make any such comparisons...absolutley proves...your hatred...your stupidity...and your total lack of credibility.

To deny the similarities in the tactics used by the Nazi's and those used by the Republicans proves your total ignorance.

thats why i fuckin hate cops

Democraty wears off only when you don't use it.