New York AG Sues NYPD and City for Excessive Violence in Racial Justice Protests

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against New York and New York City police on Thursday for using excessive force during the summer’s protests against racial justice.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, calls on the NYPD to implement systematic reforms overseen by an independent regulator. It also calls for a court to declare the police action illegal.

The 69-page filing includes allegations of dozens of excessive violent offenses, accompanied by graphic photos of individuals who police say were beaten and in some cases unlawfully detained.

“There is no doubt that the NYPD engaged in a pattern of excessive, brutal and unlawful violence against peaceful protesters,” James said in a statement accompanying the trial.

“Over the past few months, the NYPD has repeatedly and blatantly violated New Yorkers’ rights, caused significant physical and psychological damage, and created widespread mistrust of law enforcement,” said James. “Today’s lawsuit ends this long-standing pattern of brutal and illegal violence. No one is above the law – not even those charged with enforcing it.”

The lawsuit comes months after thousands gathered in New York to protest police brutality following the murders of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville. Floyd and Taylor, both Black, were murdered by the police and became symbols of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for a civil investigation into police misconduct after videos circulated of violent clashes between apparently peaceful protesters and law enforcement officials. The investigation eventually revealed 30 incidents in which police allegedly used pepper spray illegally and 75 in which they allegedly used unreasonable force.

When defendants chose from May 2020 to send thousands of under-trained agents to large-scale protests that challenged police behavior and authority, the results were predictable: mass arrests, excessive force and other unlawful attempts to suppress the protests. , “lawsuit reads.

“While many aggrieved protesters have sought financial aid to remedy their injuries, this lawsuit is seeking only declaratory and preliminary help – help necessary to end the NYPD’s decades of illegal practices in monitoring protests” , says it.

The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement that he had met with the Attorney General on Wednesday, “and we have a common goal: to continue sweeping police reforms.”

“I no longer agree that there are urgent reforms that must and will be implemented this year, including the major reforms to the discipline announced with the pledge of my Obama Foundation, all 30 recommendations from the DOI and Law Department reports, and more, ”de Blasio said.

“That work is critical and is currently taking place. A judicial process and the additional bureaucracy of a federal monitor will not speed up this work. There is no time to waste and we will keep going,” he added.

A controversial zero-lit practice is known as ‘ketling’, or trapping protesters and not allowing them to disperse, sometimes for hours. The lawsuit says protesters who were subject to the practice were unlawfully detained.

It also accuses police of routinely arresting key employees for violating curfews, despite being exempt from doing so.

The suit states that in one case, police arrested a night guard, Zuleyka Morales, who wore a badge around her neck that identified her as an essential worker. According to the complaint, Morales decides to record a protest on her way to work after noting that the police are using a lot of violence.

As soon as she hit record, Morales felt someone come in from behind and attack her and throw her to the ground. As she lay on the ground, she saw a policeman with three stripes on his sleeve, indicating the rank of sergeant, who was trying to physically restrain her, ”the suit says.

The suit says the officer and at least two others “hit her head on the sidewalk and street several times” while trying to explain that she was an essential worker.

As she lay on the ground, at least one officer obstructed her breathing by kneeling on her back and neck, so she said, “ I can’t breathe. “Morales repeated this several times and feared for her life,” the suit says.

Morales was detained with zip ties and arrested. Hours later, she lost consciousness and was transported to a hospital where she was diagnosed with head hematoma and bruising. She was returned to police custody and released the next morning with a criminal subpoena for violating curfew, according to the lawsuit.

Morales is one of more than a dozen individuals named in the lawsuit as victims of alleged excessive violence or unlawful detention. The lawsuit says that excessive violent violations made up the majority of 1,646 allegations of police misconduct reported between May 28 and June 20.

“The defendants knew or should have known that NYPD agents were in the habit of using unconstitutional excessive force to contain and disperse protests, but they did not enforce their policies to end that practice,” the lawsuit said. “Based on information and conviction, the vast majority of NYPD officers who used excessive force against protesters have not sentenced defendants.”

The filing comes as Democrats are comparing the aggressive police tactics used in the protests against racial justice to the failed attempts to stop a mob of supporters of President Donald Trump from ravaging the Capitol last week. At least five people were killed in the riot, including a Capitol police officer.

“No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter who protested yesterday, there wouldn’t have been – they wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently from the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol,” President – Select Joe Biden week in a speech after the DC riots.