Posted on 08/30/2005 10:06:25 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK (AP) - One year after large-scale protests at the Republican National Convention, the New York Civil Liberties Union issued a report on Tuesday criticizing police for using heavy-handed tactics it says resulted in hundreds of illegal arrests.
The report argues abuses were extreme enough to warrant the creation of an independent agency to negotiate and oversee future demonstrations - a job now handled by the New York Police Department. It suggests peaceful protests should be treated more like large outdoor concerts or street fairs.
"Protests are not a criminal event," Christopher Dunn, the NYCLU's associate legal director, said at a news conference. "They should not be treated as a law enforcement problem."
The 65-page report criticized police Commissioner Raymond Kelly for "refusing to acknowledge the department made any mistakes in its handling of the convention protests."
Kelly fired back with a statement calling the department's efforts to secure the convention against terrorism and control protesters "a model of expert planning, professionalism and restraint."
He called the report "a collection of old, untrue assertions and uncorroborated, self-serving statements by individuals who were arrested in the course of the convention."
The report chronicles the often tense standoff last summer between the nation's largest police department and the tens of thousands of demonstrators at the GOP convention at Madison Square Garden. While anti-war and other 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.
The report accuses officers of arresting numerous innocent bystanders, including some who were swept up in large mesh nets. It says police detained many demonstrators for 24 hours or longer at a filthy makeshift holding facility at a Hudson River pier and illegally fingerprinted them for minor offenses.
Up to 10,000 officers were deployed at the four-day event by the 36,500-member department - a show of force the NYCLU called overkill and a threat to free speech. NYCLU executive director Donna Lieberman also said her group was concerned about excessive surveillance and whether police were amassing "videotape dossiers" on protesters.
"The obsessive-compulsive videotaping of everything that happens is out of control," she said.
The police department's chief spokesman, Paul Browne, said police tapes of demonstrations typically are destroyed within a year unless they are needed in criminal cases.
Filth, the Left is filth.
Lefties are panicking.. they're the ones that want to control everything.. decide what to ban and what not. the more and more I see these people. they remind me of the socialist party that gave up all control under Hitler.. to Hitler. amd then they got shot
These people held seminars on how to confuse bomb sniffing dogs and assualt cops and their horses before the convention.
I'm waiting now for the report about the Boston Convention. You know, the one where all the protesters had to stand blocks away under the railroad tracks?
Remember, they were also in cages, too.
Here in Boston, on one of our cable access channels, they play this stupid program of commies reviewing tapes of the Republican Convention protesters. They play it every week, the same goddamned program. And of course they play it up like they were tortured by the cops. It makes me sick.
The New York Civil Liberties Union....GAG me with a spoon!!
(sits back, closes eyes, imagines)
Wow.
BTW, the 'obsessive police videotaping' is to protect the police from accusations of brutality. Imagine how many of such charges would have come about if the police hadn't videotaped what they were doing.
Most of these people are just hooligans. People don't riot for their adopted causes; they adopt causes as an excuse to riot.
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