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Razzle Dazzle
Managing the News From City Hall The truth is that the NYPD was confronted with a more complicated situation than is posed by those two extremes. And overreactions by police commanders at Manhattan rallies in at least two instances during the convention, as well as the detention of some protesters for up to two days for offenses that normally would be handled with the issuance of a summons, have raised questions as to whether public safety was the only concern driving the NYPD's activities. The Times article was newsworthy because it provided further evidence that the Bloomberg administration was determined to minimize the impact that anti-war demonstrations would have on the media coverage of the convention.
That would certainly have appealed to the salesman side of Mayor Bloomberg; he has sometimes seemed to regard protesters on a variety of issues as the equivalent of ants at a picnic. But it also is at odds with his frequent portrayal of the city as a place where the different and disparate people and opinions help create the energy that allows it to thrive. And so it was not surprising that on the day after the initial story appeared, Mr. Dwyer reported that court papers filed by city lawyers were seeking to keep sealed the records of police surveillance leading up to and during the 2004 convention, both because those documents could make the city more vulnerable to lawsuits and out of concern that they might be "misinterpreted." Such misinterpretation, presumably, would lead some wrong-thinking persons to conclude that Mr. Bloomberg was not really a champion of free expression and had opted to take sides with a President who had become highly unpopular in the city because of the Iraq war and the ever-changing and ever-flimsy justifications for it. Those suspicions had their roots in the city's handling of an anti-war rally held in February 2003 - a month before Mr. Bush actually launched the invasion. In January of that year, the city had been chosen to host the 2004 convention, and so the announcement of plans for a mass march to the United Nations on Feb. 15 held the promise of some discomfort for Mr. Bloomberg. City lawyers went to court to try to prevent a march, and ultimately the anti-war forces had to settle for a rally outside the UN - a format that offers less-dramatic TV footage and makes it more difficult to rev up a crowd. Roadblocks for Protesters On the afternoon of the rally, cops repeatedly blocked demonstrators from gaining access to the protest site north of the United Nations. New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman would later tell a City Council hearing that while NYPD officials had assured rally organizers that participants would be able to get over to First Ave. prior to the noon starting time as long as the area hadn't grown too congested, by 11 a.m. cops had already set up metal barricades along a 30-block stretch of Second Ave. to prevent protesters from getting any closer to the UN. Transport Workers' Union Local 100 President Roger Toussaint said at the time that the closest his members got was a spot two blocks from where the tail end of the crowd was supposed to be. About 300 arrests were made, many of them involving protesters who objected when cops told them they couldn't get any closer to the rally site. The Bloomberg administration didn't even send a representative to the Council hearing two weeks after the protest. The Mayor's Communications Director at the time, Bill Cunningham, faulted rally organizers for underestimating the size of the crowd when they told the NYPD they expected about 100,000 to attend. (The irony of that statement was that the official police estimate for the rally was 100,000; organizers claimed that five times that many people had turned out.) While press coverage of the Council hearing was relatively limited, Mr. Bloomberg was surely aware of the conflicts that arose between the NYPD and the demonstrators. And so the fact that the same kind of problems occurred at the convention more than 18 months later, and on a much-larger scale, suggested that the Mayor did not have any quarrel with cops' handling of the UN protest, or Police Commissioner Ray Kelly would have made changes. Got the Bum's Rush Instead, there were once again massive arrests made - 1,806 during the convention - for what in most cases were piddling offenses. There were also hundreds of protesters whose only crime apparently was following police orders on how to march during rallies in lower Manhattan, only to get scooped up in orange netting as the first step toward disappearing into the system long enough for President Bush to come into New York, give his acceptance speech at the convention, and then leave town without his ears being singed by dissent. Last week's Times story stated that the NYPD surveillance in the months leading up to the convention understandably targeted groups which either had a history of causing disruptions during major events in other cities or had been advocating using the Republican get-together as a launching pad for malicious mischief. But police also infiltrated and compiled dossiers on groups that had long histories of peaceful protest activity. Those groups ranged from United for Peace and Justice, the primary anti-war organization in New York, to Billionaires for Bush, whose members dress in top hats and tuxedos and stage events mocking the President and Federal policies that have benefited his wealthiest supporters. What Need for Files? Since it was possible for undercover cops to blend into these groups, a case could be made that those with malevolent intentions might also have been able to insinuate themselves into organizations that were seen as nonviolent, and then reveal themselves only when it was too late and the surrounding crowd too large to prevent them from wreaking havoc. But that would not explain why NYPD operatives decided it was necessary to put together files on the legitimate groups and their activities. "Of course the Police Department has to have secrets and engage in covert operations," Ms. Lieberman said March 29. "But the reports that the Police Department is sending covert agents to Billionaires for Bush? Give me a break." All New Yorkers have an interest in knowing what is in the NYPD files about convention-related surveillance, Ms. Lieberman said, "so that we can make a judgment about the state of our rights in New York and whether merely engaging in legal political activity can put you on the radar screen. I'm concerned that we have a Police Department that either can't or won't draw a legal distinction between legitimate peaceful protest and terrorism." The Times articles are based on interviews and NYPD records that are relevant to lawsuits filed by the NYCLU a month after the 2004 convention. Those suits challenged the legality of the mass arrests of persons the Civil Liberties Union maintained had been legally and peaceably gathered on city streets for protests; their uncommonly lengthy detention in an unsanitary bus depot on Manhattan's West Side; and their being fingerprinted - another departure from the norm. Many Arrests Kicked At virtually the same time that those suits were filed, the Manhattan District Attorney's Office announced that it was dismissing all charges against 227 people who were arrested near Ground Zero after prosecutors viewed a videotape of the circumstances that led police to arrest them. While many of them were members of the War Resistors League, more than a few were merely bystanders who were swept up in the dragnet as the group began to march uptown toward the Garden. There had also been mass arrests of protesters around Union Square Park - once again generally of either persons walking lawfully, including persons who were not involved in the protest - and also without prior warning by police to desist from whatever activities they were engaged in. Those detained at Pier 57 were kept in conditions so squalid that even some of the cops assigned to the facility became ill. Many of those arrested, according to the NYCLU, developed rashes and respiratory ailments after having to sit or lie on a floor covered with soot and "quite possibly toxic automotive fluids." They were in many cases held for 36 hours or more before being released after receiving a desk-appearance ticket or going before a judge. Brushed Off Complaints In the aftermath of the convention, Mr. Bloomberg downplayed the less-savory aspects of the NYPD's treatment of the protesters, contending that the conditions in which they were detained were not as bad as alleged and that the department deserved congratulations for keeping an event of national significance free of the kind of mayhem visited upon the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle. In essence, he was implying that the ends justified the means. They did not. The NYPD had gone beyond its proper role of controlling and containing protests to avert disorder or violence, functioning almost as a private security force at the service of President Bush and the Republican convention. The mass arrests on spurious grounds summoned memories of when past administrations used to "sweep" the homeless out of Penn Station right around Thanksgiving to make the area look less seedy. Keeping the protesters locked up for a night or more had echoes of the days when minor violators, including protesters, used to be strip-searched at Rikers Island. Bad Company These are not happy associations for Mr. Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly. Many New Yorkers might not rally round the NYCLU in protesting the homeless sweeps because of their feelings about the unpleasant sights and smells of many of those being removed, but they wouldn't feel the same kind of ambivalence about mass incarcerations of people doing nothing more offensive than exercising their First Amendment rights. And the parallels between the demonstrators (and non-participants who just happened to be in the area) and those subjected to the Rikers strip-searches are also not good ones for the current Mayor and Police Commissioner. The reasons go beyond the monetary liability in this case and the fact that the city had to pay $50 million to settle the class-action suit that grew out of the improper Rikers searches. Unwelcome Comparisons The least-shocking aspects of the Rikers strip-searches were that they came during Rudy Giuliani's administration and were undertaken by the Correction Department when it was run by Bernie Kerik. Most New Yorkers will credit Mr. Giuliani for being smart and capable; the other side of his image, however, is that of a crude authoritarian who reveled in intimidating his critics. And Mr. Kerik is widely viewed as a sleazy rogue whose advancement in city government was solely attributable to his loyalty to Mr. Giuliani. Mr. Bloomberg, on the other hand, is regarded as more fair-minded and civilized, and Mr. Kelly is considered one of the city's greatest Police Commissioners. Any instance in which their administration summons memories of the worst excesses of Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Kerik should cause them to wince. Whatever concerns the Mayor and his Police Commissioner had about possible protests should have been factored into the decision to seek the Republican convention; once they landed it, the right thing to do would have been to maintain order without worrying about whether mass demonstrations might affect either Mr. Bush's image or the city's. The President wanted the convention here in no small measure to remind the American public of 9/11; those demonstrating against him were out there to highlight the misguided decisions that turned this country's focus away from getting the perpetrators of those attacks in favor of the calamitous quagmire in Iraq. The Post, in its editorial skewering the Times for writing about the NYPD's tactics before and during the convention, stated, "Even a goodly number of the 'peaceful' protesters had promised to do their best to bring the convention to a standstill - thus abrogating the free-speech rights of convention delegates." Won't Withstand Scrutiny What the editorial neglected to mention was that the immediate area around the Garden was off-limits to the protesters, meaning their best shot at even figuratively bringing the convention to a standstill was to get the media focused at least as much on what was happening a few blocks from Mr. Bush's re-nomination. And since the only way to accomplish that would have been through violence, it hardly follows that "peaceful protesters" could have succeeded if that had been their intent. Much of the harm the Bush Administration has done to this country - from the fiasco in Iraq to the use of the Patriot Act to intrude on civil liberties and even the proper administration of justice by the nation's U.S. Attorneys - has come about because of the complacency of officials who failed to raise their voices when they knew something wrong was happening. Mr. Bloomberg, as pragmatic as you would expect a successful businessman to be, may have concluded that mass demonstrations during the convention could accomplish nothing positive other than to allow the protesters to vent. Such a conclusion may have persuaded him that it was better to stifle dissent sufficiently to hope that the Bush Administration would express its gratitude in the form of more aid to New York. If so, given that aid from Washington still comes grudgingly when it comes at all, it's hard to see how what the Mayor gained compensates for what was lost when he hit the mute button. He might have gotten more - and with fewer reasons for regret - out of having the undercover cops monitor the polls in Ohio two months later.
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