- Sep 12, 2009
- 6,840
- 3,594
By Peter Rugh
The New York Police Department has reportedly been giving young adults free tickets to screenings
of "Selma," and last month, on Martin Luther King Day, officers with the 81st Precinct in Brooklyn's
Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood even drove a group of local teens to see the film, which
depicts the historic march for voting rights. At the same time, however, the NYPD has sought to
thwart, criminalize and defame the current incarnation of civil rights activism underway in New York
treating the Black Lives Matter movement as a threat on par with terrorism.
On Feb. 10, NYPD Commissioner William Bratton asked lawmakers in Albany to elevate resisting
arrest from a misdemeanor to a felony. Arrestees going limp and forcing officers to carry them off to
jail was a common tactic of the civil rights movement — which has continued to this day — and is
considered resisting arrest by the NYPD and other law enforcement agencies. At the end of January,
Bratton announced he is arming a new unit called the Strategic Response Group with machine guns
that will "assist us in dealing with demonstrations." Speaking at a breakfast organized by the Police
Foundation, Bratton explained that the unit "is designed for dealing with events like our recent
protests, or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris."
Since grand juries in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island opted late last year not to indict police officers
for killing unarmed, black civilians, Black Lives Matter demonstrators in New York have staged
"die-ins" by the thousands and shut down major traffic thoroughfares such as the West Side Highway
and the Holland Tunnel. As in many locations across the country, Black Lives Matter marches and
rallies have been angry and participants and organizers sharply critical of police but, by and large,
they have not been violent.
Read more: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/...-nypd-s-attempts-to-thwart-black-lives-matter
The New York Police Department has reportedly been giving young adults free tickets to screenings
of "Selma," and last month, on Martin Luther King Day, officers with the 81st Precinct in Brooklyn's
Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood even drove a group of local teens to see the film, which
depicts the historic march for voting rights. At the same time, however, the NYPD has sought to
thwart, criminalize and defame the current incarnation of civil rights activism underway in New York
treating the Black Lives Matter movement as a threat on par with terrorism.
On Feb. 10, NYPD Commissioner William Bratton asked lawmakers in Albany to elevate resisting
arrest from a misdemeanor to a felony. Arrestees going limp and forcing officers to carry them off to
jail was a common tactic of the civil rights movement — which has continued to this day — and is
considered resisting arrest by the NYPD and other law enforcement agencies. At the end of January,
Bratton announced he is arming a new unit called the Strategic Response Group with machine guns
that will "assist us in dealing with demonstrations." Speaking at a breakfast organized by the Police
Foundation, Bratton explained that the unit "is designed for dealing with events like our recent
protests, or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris."
Since grand juries in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island opted late last year not to indict police officers
for killing unarmed, black civilians, Black Lives Matter demonstrators in New York have staged
"die-ins" by the thousands and shut down major traffic thoroughfares such as the West Side Highway
and the Holland Tunnel. As in many locations across the country, Black Lives Matter marches and
rallies have been angry and participants and organizers sharply critical of police but, by and large,
they have not been violent.
Read more: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/...-nypd-s-attempts-to-thwart-black-lives-matter