Open Letter to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg
Concerning the Mishandling of the February 15th Demonstration by the NYPD
February 20, 2003
Dear Mayor Bloomberg,
I am writing to express my deep concerns about the recent conduct of the NYPD at the February 15th rally against
war in Iraq. I have been studying a variety of police practices for the past 12 years and teach criminology and sociology
of law at Brooklyn College. I was present at the rally and have spoken to many of my students, colleagues, and friends who
were there about their personal experiences. I also had conversations with several legal observers and with one of the staff
organizers for United For Peace and Justice, who was involved in negotiations with the police prior to the event. I also reviewed
press accounts of the demonstration in the mainstream media and on Indymedia.org.
March Permit
The decision not to grant a march permit seems difficult to defend on the grounds of deployment of police resources and
concerns about public safety. Major cities all over the world were able to accommodate large marches without any major incidents.
Media reports of between 500,000 and 1.2 million in Berlin, Paris, London, Rome, Madrid, and Barcelona and last month’s
march in Washington show that cities with their own serious security concerns were able to handle these events with much smaller
police forces than our own. London was on a high state of alert and Spanish cities have been recent targets of bombings from
Basque separatist groups. Yet in none of these cities was lack of police resources or security concerns raised as grounds
for prohibiting marches or rallies. The NYPD is the largest, and according to your own statements, one of the best trained
departments in the world in the area of anti-terrorism, and yet it claimed they could not adequately handle the security needs
of the march and the rest of the city. If this is so, there needs to be a major overhauling of the way that the department
conceptualizes security for large events.
One of the implications of the denial of the permit is that only marches that are large enough to potentially effect national
policy can’t be adequately policed. This flies in the face of the core principles of the First Amendment. The whole
purpose of protecting the right of assembly is to insure that the public has an opportunity to express its opinions on matters
of grave public concern. If ten thousand, one hundred thousand, or one million people feel so motivated it is the job of the
city government and its police department to facilitate it not fight against it. This was exactly the attitude taken by police
in London and the rest of Europe.
The decision to deny a march permit ended up costing the city just as much or more on overtime and other expenses as a
unified march would have. Commissioner Kelly reported that 5 million dollars was spent on Saturday to pay for the deployment
of thousands of officers. This is in sharp contrast to a report in the New York Times that expenses for policing the
1996 Yankees celebration parade of over 1 million people cost only $250,000. Much of department’s expenses on the 15th
came from chasing down feeder marches and break-away marches, including a major deployment near Times Square. The policing
of a unified march and rally might have involved a major inconvenience to drivers, but it represents much less of a safety
and security concern than having lots of angry young people marching in small groups all over Midtown in response to the denial
of a march permit.
It is also indefensible that the police did not allow for the placing of portable toilets near the rally. How are the security
concerns here any different than allowing cars to park on the street without inspection? This is a completely unreasonable
overreaction.
Demonstration Pens and Barricades
One of the ways to dramatically reduce the cost and logistical complexity of large rallies and marches is to eliminate
the widespread use of demonstration pens. These pens have to be staffed by large numbers of officers and are frequent flash
points for confrontations between the police and demonstrators. No other major city last weekend used a similar crowd control
strategy and yet other cities were able to deal with crowds significantly larger than New York’s without incident.
According to retired Assistant Chief Hoehl the origin of the use of these pens was a New York Yankees victory rally at
City Hall in which a large crowd surged towards the stage, creating fears of people being crushed. In fact, no one was injured
in that or similar events. In fact the police have not provided any evidence of people being injured as a result of the movements
of large crowds at a demonstration. It is my opinion that these pens serve primarily to isolate and inconvenience participants
and serve very little safety function. People should be able to move about the rally, come and go freely, and assemble ahead
of time with their friends and co-workers. Each of these was not allowed by police on the 15th.
Traffic Flow
The free flow of automobile traffic seemed to be the number one motivation for Saturday’s numerous acts of police
abuse of force. The efforts to keep 2nd and 3rd Avenues open despite a massive influx of peaceful protestors
led to a series of confrontations that were much more dangerous than diverting traffic onto alternate routes would have been.
If the department had made a decision early on to close down 2nd Ave. most if not all of the confrontations could
have been avoided. Most of the police attacks against demonstrators occurred after a bottleneck developed on Second Ave as
cross streets to 1st Ave filled and people were being forced onto the sidewalks despite their huge numbers. This
caused the police to use excessive force to try and push people onto the sidewalk; the ensuing standoff spilled over onto
3rd Ave. because people there couldn’t get onto 2nd Ave. These groups then quite reasonably started moving
north on 3rd as instructed. Their numbers, however, were far too great to fit on the sidewalk because of the loss
of access to 2nd Ave.
Use of Force
I believe it is unconscionable for the police to beat, pepper-spray and trample people with horses simply to keep a street
open to traffic. Police use of force is supposed to be moderated in relation to the threat to the safety of officers or the
public. In this case there was no threat to anyone’s personal safety or property. It was the actions of the police that
created numerous injuries to both police and demonstrators, and the potential for an outbreak of widespread violence and property
destruction.
A frequent justification by the police for this policy is that they need to keep roads open for emergency vehicles. This
is at best inaccurate and at worst disingenuous. The police should be well aware that on Saturday, as in past large protests,
demonstrators happily yielded to emergency vehicles. I personally witnessed the free flow of ambulances up and down 2nd
Ave. while thousands of people were marching on that street. Further, the concern of a spillover effect of stopped up traffic
could have been avoided if the department had simply diverted traffic and informed drivers the day before to avoid the area.
The department resisted both of these simple preventative measures until after the demonstrations were already underway, leaving
many motorists trapped in large crowds.
Crowd Estimates
The department said repeatedly that they were prepared to handle a demonstration of 100,000 people. If that is so then
why was there such chaos on 2nd and 3rd Avenues? Police officials have responded that they were overwhelmed
by the size of the crowd. This means that they either were not capable of handling a crowd of 100,000 despite several weeks
of advanced notice and planning, or that the crowd was considerably larger. It appears that the police only counted the people
in the pens along 1st Ave. This is usually done using a formula of 5,000 stationary people per avenue width block.
This would in fact add up to slightly over 100,000. However, this fails to take into account the huge crowds that the police
turned away.
Transportation
The MTA and police badly mishandled the movement of people to and from the demonstration causing major disruptions for
both demonstrators and the general public. In London and many other cities extra public transit was arranged to facilitate
demonstrators. Amtrak and Metro North both put on extra trains for the 15th. The MTA, however, made no adjustments
in their schedule and in fact undertook major construction diversions, which caused significant delays in getting to the demonstration
area. The police department’s decision to close individual subway stations also caused major inconveniences and contributed
to the concentration of demonstrators on 2nd and 3rd Ave., since they could not get to the demonstration
without having to walk dozens of blocks. It is sometimes necessary to close stations if patrons cannot exit the station before
the next train arrives or if platforms become dangerously full while awaiting trains. However, I have seen no evidence that
either of these conditions existed. Further, police could have controlled access to the stations to prevent overcrowding without
closing them completely. It appears instead that stations were closed to prevent more demonstrators from gathering in a particular
area, because of the failures of the overall planning and the unwillingness to open up streets to facilitate movement to the
rally. The closure of the Times Square station later in the day is additional evidence that limiting access and not public
safety was the primary motivation for station closings.
The War on Terrorism
Policing experts Jerome Skolnick (NYU Law School) and James Fyfe (former NYPD detective) wrote that one of the greatest
threats to police-community relations occurs when police departments take on a "war" footing. The "war of drugs" and the "war
on crime" cause the police to view the citizenry as a hostile "enemy" rather than citizens, whom they are employed to protect
and serve. The addition of a municipal "war on terrorism" is serving to further militarize the relationship between the police
and the public. What we saw on Saturday was primarily the result of this growing tendency to treat the public as the enemy.
This is a dangerous and disturbing development and could have long lasting negative consequences for police-community relations
into the future.
Recommendations
Based on these assessments I would like to make the following recommendations:
- All march permits should be granted--given reasonable time, place, and manner concerns—regardless of the size of
the crowd. Blanket security-based denials are an affront to our most basic notions of freedom and democracy.
- The use of police demonstration pens should be eliminated. Demonstrators should be able to move about freely within a
demonstration and be able to come and go as they please. Barricades should be used to protect demonstrators from traffic and
to prevent access to sensitive areas. While some use of emergency corridors may be reasonable, the breaking up of demonstrations
just to keep cross street traffic moving is not.
- The police should not use pepper spray, batons, and horses for the sole purpose of moving large crowds out of the streets.
These levels of force should only be utilized when there is a clear and present threat to the material and personal safety
of New Yorkers. No such threat was present on the 15th.
- The NYPD and MTA should make plans to augment public transportation in the event of large demonstrations rather than impede
it.
- The NYPD needs to rethink its "war" footing. While the threat of terrorism is real, so is the threat to our way of life
from excessive security. Concerns about security should not be used to prevent peaceable assemblies. Every other major city
in a democratic country seems to be able to balance these needs; so should New York City.
- Disciplinary action should be taken against command level officers who authorized the use of horses, pepper spray, and
baton charges against demonstrators marching to the protest. Disciplinary action should also be taken against individual officers
who used unnecessary force in the control of crowds and the arrest of demonstrators.
Thank you for taking the time to consider these important matters,
Alex S. Vitale Ph.D.
Department of Sociology
Brooklyn College
Please feel free to distribute this letter, including sending it to the mayor with your own cover letter. I encourage other
to write letters about their personal experiences and distribute them to the media and elected officials. You are welcome
to plagiarize, cut and paste, etc. sections of this letter that you find useful.
For regular updates on policing issues in New York City, send an email to alvgc@yahoo.com
