NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio Enforces Curfew Again, Setting Up Another Night Of Police Assaults
Just before New York’s 8 p.m. curfew Thursday, heavily armored New York Police Department officers on bicycles rushed a group of protesters in the Bronx who were demonstrating against police brutality. The officers charged with their batons out, Jake Offenhartz, a Gothamist reporter, tweeted. “Multiple people hit. Someone bleeding from the head,” he reported. Offenhartz jumped over a car and was able to escape because of his press badge, he said. “This wasn’t even a confrontation it was a trap.”
The protesters who had gathered in the Bronx were not violent, multiple journalists at the scene attested. But with the 8 p.m. curfew in place, NYPD officers took it as their mandate to arrest everyone in sight, using brutal force to make sure they got the message. Even people walking through the neighborhood who were not participating in the protests found themselves trapped by NYPD officers who blocked exits on both sides of a block, New Yorker staff writer Emily Witt tweeted. “They are arresting literally everyone at this protest,” Witt reported, including medics and legal observers.
“We are peaceful,” protesters chanted at the cops. “What the fuck are you?”
At least 10 protesters were also arrested on Manhattan’s Upper East Side around 8:30 p.m., as they attempted to attend a peaceful demonstration at Gracie Mansion, the official residence of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D).
The New York City police crackdown on largely peaceful protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who was killed May at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, has now entered its second week. Since his killing, law enforcement officials in New York City have arrested thousands of protesters and violently beaten many more.
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