Ambushed by NYPD pre-crime enforcement

Hundreds corralled and swept off sidewalk near Ground Zero into jail. Potential display of free speech and assembly averted by quick acting NYPD.

Jeff Paterson
Independent Media Center
September 4, 2004

New York City - On Tuesday, August 31, I had just recovered from covering the events of the previous Sunday where the world witnessed more than a half million people form a sea of humanity and flow past Madison Square Garden to deliver a thunderous NO! to the Bush Agenda on the eve of the Republican National Convention.

Although “A Day of Nonviolent Civil Disobedience and Direct Action” had been called for by the A31 Action Coalition, the city had yet to come to a screeching halt. A “solemn procession” organized by the War Resister’s League, School of the Americas Watch, and others was scheduled to walk from Ground Zero north to Madison Square Garden. I figured I could snap a few photos of the beginning of the procession, run up to the FOX News “Shut-up-a-thon” and maybe even grab a few stills of the Johnny Cash “Man in Black” memorial nearby as well.

At the World Trade Center, about 400 “protester-types” milled about. The few visible banners and signs didn’t give the hundred members of the media—reporters, television cameras, radio—many angles to cover. But recent Iraq veterans in military uniform patiently repeated how they had come to see the war as unjust based on their first hand experiences. Hundreds of police stood at the ready.

At 4:30 pm organizers and police huddled surrounded by most of the media present. The agreement, “Stay on sidewalk, abide by traffic lights, and keep it moving” was announced. Basically, the minimal allowed by law for “unpermitted” assemblies.

Pre-crime bust

As the march “very solemnly” crossed the street with the lit little green man, “Stay on sidewalk. If anyone steps into the street, everyone will be arrested” declared the voice of God. In retrospect it may have been a police megaphone. This seemed a little extreme, but the with our escort bike and foot cops filling the street, it seemed unlikely that anyone would attempt to “take the street.”

A minute later, with a couple hundred of us now walking, still “very solemnly” along the historic St. Paul’s Chapel churchyard, the thunderous voice spoke again: “You are blocking the sidewalk. You are under arrest.”

Bewilderment, disbelief, and resignation rippled through the crowd. “Don’t the cops need to provoke something first?” someone asked. Another activist tried to get people to press themselves closer to the fence in hopes that the police would allow the procession to continue. No such luck.

Our police bike escort quickly became a bike barrier, soon to be reinforced by orange mesh fencing. National Lawyers Guild legal observers looked on. The first observer to approach the police was arrested.

Simply put, it is a well carried out plan all around. Everyone did their job well. Organizers followed police instructions to proceed down a specific sidewalk. Cops methodically took up positions for the coming ambush. A “warning” was issued, and the arrest announcement was given. Police troop movements seemingly prevented any possibility of escape.

But escape many did. Television crews with anchormen in suits, women in “Republican” looking dress, and a few others that could prove that they were indeed “good Americans” in the wrong place at the wrong time. My “Independent Media Center Working Press” badge displayed on my camera strap did not suffice for a free pass. While NYPD Police Officer Western who arrested me paused momentarily on the question of rounding up the media, his supervisor quickly clarified that my IMC press credentials were indeed “arrest-able.”

Left in the orange net with us were a couple of tourists from France, a student on his way to his college freshman orientation, various “independent” media people without NYPD-approved credentials, and more than a few average looking New Yorkers.

While cuffed and sitting in the street awaiting our bus trip to who-knew-where, detainees repeatedly demanded answers to outlandish questions such as “what am I being arrested for?” Initially, the replies were along the lines of “You know what!” or the more honest, “I need to talk to my supervisor first—I’ll let you know soon.” Later on the bus, officer Western declared: “Disorderly conduct, you, you and you.”

A woman cop blurted out, “Look, we all know that eventually you guys were going to do something. So why should I follow you around town just waiting for you to do it? It’s a lot easier for all of us this way. You guys knew you didn’t have a permit, what did you expect?”

Was the NYPD inspired by Tom Cruise in the movie Minority Report where pre-crime police arrest those before they can do wrong? Or was it simply a call made pretty high up the food chain that the cost of a little bad PR about “civil rights curtailed” and a likely wrongful arrest lawsuit down the road were a small price to pay to put a dent in the rising chorus of anti-RNC voices in the streets?

Mainstream media would laud these “successful police tactics” later under headlines such as “protesters clash with police” I would later read.

“You are not going anywhere until Bush leaves town” I would hear a few times from various jailers over the next 48 hours.

Part 2: Pier 57 – “Gitmo on the Hudson”

1,800 suspected protesters “cleaned” from city streets and “processed” for up to 24 hours in a converted bus maintenance facility—packed into razor wire topped cages and forced to sleep on oily grime under “Raw Chemical Storage Area” and “Antifreeze” signs. Coming up.