Arriving at Washington Square around 6:30 on Monday, June 1st, I fell in line with a massive mobilization of Black Lives Matter protesters and began to march north toward Times Square.
Day four of demonstrations in New York City, and the police presence was even heavier. Tensions were more palpable. The protesters were angrier. NYPD’s intimidation of peaceful demonstrators and their deliberate escalation to excessive force had been captured on video and distributed on Facebook and Twitter each of the previous three nights, and those marching alongside me knew they were at risk of being tear-gassed, beaten with batons, and violently arrested simply by walking out onto the street that evening.
As the march progressed, police presence on either side of the avenue exerted heavy influence over the group’s speed and direction. Realizing their route was being intentionally diverted, protest leaders were led in a winding path through small cross streets in an effort to bottleneck the numbers and prevent an arrival at Times Square, and eventually the demonstration’s organizers lost control of the crowd amid the confusion. Despite best efforts to keep the march tight, individuals began to scatter. At 7:30, with the remainder of the group approaching Central Park, the proceeding took a turn toward the East Side to join with another group that had been marching from downtown. And at 8:00 p.m., three hours before Cuomo’s 11:00 p.m. curfew, police managed to split it further and took the opportunity to close in on both ends of 51st.
In a classic “kettling” maneuver by the police, marchers began to panic; many retreated to the sidewalk to avoid being caught in the wave of bicycle officers waiting for them; about 80 officers on foot closed in from behind; a crash sounded as a traffic barricade was thrown through the window of a Duane Reade. Among the sudden chaos, and knowing there was nowhere left to go, I decided to hold the line against my better judgment, hands defenselessly in the air, and remained standing in the street as the swarm of yellow uniforms closed in.
“Back up! Back up! Back up!” the shielded face in mine shouted with each slam of his bike on the pavement; after some heated back-and-forth, he snarled and curtly informed me that he’d like to use his handlebars to “bash my fucking teeth in.” I put my hand out to keep distance, and tripped backward over a bicycle deliberately placed behind my feet. Three officers tackled me, and my pleasant new acquaintance, shouting “stop resisting!” at my immobilized body, punched the side of my head against the cement five times before placing my hands in cuffs.
I was pulled to my feet and spun to face the remainder of the protesters corralled on the sidewalk, many of whom were being tackled indiscriminately into storefront windows and arrested all the same as I was, despite their smarter choice to disperse. With 25 eventually sitting handcuffed in the street, the officers took on a starkly different tone. All at once they were jovial, friendly, accommodating — my arresting officer, who until moments ago was slamming my head into the ground in a blind rage and threatening to knock my teeth out with his bike spokes, kindly introduced himself as Jimmy and asked where I was from.
For three hours I sat on the pavement and listened as cops made small talk with their detainees, joked with one another, and explained how tough they’ve had it the past few days, what with all the disrespect they’ve gotten lately. I was informed that they patrol in fear of having objects thrown at them, in an attempt to garner sympathy from their captive audience. I sat in a small cluster of two other protesters – one of whom was an 18-year-old young man from East Flatbush, Brooklyn, worried to tears about leaving his mom alone for the night.
By 11:30 we were placed in a patrol car and driven to the nearby precinct, and upon discovering it was at capacity, were shuffled to a transport van that proceeded to pick up six individuals at Herald Square found on the scene of a looting.
They wondered what a white guy from Jersey was doing in the van with them, and after explaining I had joined the evening’s protests, one scoffed. “Out protesting. What the fuck did you expect to happen? You can’t just go out and protest this shit. They got guns and tanks and drones. You think you can beat that with a bunch of pussies in the street chanting shit? Y’all should give up and stay home next time.” His face mask fell below his lower lip as he spoke. No way to adjust it in these makeshift ziptie handcuffs.
The van was silent after that. The exchange replayed in my head for the next twelve hours, three of which were spent in the long line outside the precinct at 1 Police Plaza of to-be-processed detainees, the next nine in the mass holding cell, waiting for my arresting officer to process three individuals’ paperwork — a simple administrative task that for humiliation’s sake, and for the sake of discouraging future protest activity, was dragged out for hours.
Sitting in silence, catching passing moments of sleep on the wooden bench by the wall, I watched as more arrestees filed into the holding cell. At one point, nearly fifty individuals were shuffled into a space with realistic capacity for half that number, most of whom weren’t offered protective face masks by any employee of the precinct.
Many of these arrestees couldn’t have been a day older than 16. One flashed the blood gang sign when he entered and was welcomed into a small group of young men in the corner. Some of these boys were quiet, head in hands, some trying to sleep — and others were rowdy, picking fights, demonstrating they’ve been chewed up by this system before and in some adolescent act of rebellion refused to display a single indication that it’s broken their spirits. In their actions, they were tough, standoffish, goofballs; but in their eyes, scared, uncertain, and deeply sad. I was dumbstruck again and again by this dichotomy as they entered. These were just kids, already trapped in a cycle of brutal incarceration and dehumanization they may never escape.
I was released at 11:00 a.m. Tuesday morning with a constitutionally questionable charge of “unlawful assembly,” which will no doubt be quickly dismissed on my summons date in September. Some kind organizers outside the precinct sent my information to the Lawyer’s Guild and set me up with a rideshare home. A quick glance at Twitter showed me some leaked police scanner audio depicting officers encouraging one another to “just run them [protesters] over” and to “just shoot those motherfuckers.”
As my head throbbed, the blood coagulated on my hands, arms and legs, and my body sighed and rattled in the outside air, echoes of exchanges on the pavement, in the transport van and in the holding cell continued to ring. The dehumanization I and countless others had experienced that night at the hands of NYPD, the sadistic display of authority slammed into my left temple, the humiliation and total apathy that had been dealt to those held in custody — none of this comes close to the daily realities of many sharing that cell and untold thousands across the country. The police monopoly on aggression has rendered entire populations wretchedly hopeless for any meaningful change. The American obsession with violence as the very foundation of our social structure, as the very fabric of our relationships both individual and systemic, has completely broken its own people. Not only do people have nothing; they feel, fundamentally, that they are nothing.
Peaceful protesters can be run down at any moment by high-speed patrol cars. Minimal resistance is met with bullets and minimal repercussions for the shooter. Far be it from me to judge someone on the receiving end of that abuse for stealing a pair of Jordans from a Footlocker amid the chaos.
I was among 700 people arrested during the overnight protests on June 1st. For the sake of my emotional health, I haven’t been closely looking at my Twitter feed since, but I imagine that number climbed higher and higher the following nights. And with Manhattan Supreme Court Judge James Burke allowing for the detainment of those arrested to extend beyond 24 hours without receiving charges — effectively suspending habeas corpus — peaceful protesters are suffering even crueler, even more clearly unconstitutional circumstances.
This is a police state. A broken system of weaponized authority and dehumanization. It’s hard to imagine, after what I’ve seen, that the system will allow itself to be fixed.
Mark Prowse 