The Daily - Why Are Police Attacking Protestors?

Episode Date: June 8, 2020

This episode contains strong language.Across the country, the police have responded to protests over police brutality with more force. Today, we listen in on confrontations at demonstrations in New York. Guest: Ali Watkins, a crime and law enforcement reporter at The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: Across the country, police officers have responded to growing protests over police brutality with increasingly violent crowd control techniques, using batons, tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets on protesters, bystanders and journalists.In New York, officers have charged and swung batons at demonstrators after curfew with seemingly little provocation. The mayor said he would review any reports of inappropriate enforcement.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, as protesters across the country demonstrated against police violence, they were met over and over with police violence. My colleague, Allie Watkins, was on the streets of New York. It's Monday, June 8th. Allie, you cover the New York City Police Department, and they have been consumed by these protests. Where did that story start for you? So I came into this story last Sunday.

It's the first weekend of protests in New York. And we had kind of been seeing them grow in intensity for a few days at that point. We had seen police cars burned. We had seen a lot of clashes between protesters and police. And by Sunday night, we had this kind of growing tension between demonstrators and the cops. I went out and linked up with a group of a couple thousand protesters who were marching from Brooklyn into Manhattan. And as the night kind of went on, they broke up into a bunch of smaller groups that just

kind of dispersed across several streets. And, you know, we're talking about some of Manhattan's best-known neighborhoods, like Soho, Tribeca. You're getting up towards, like, Union Square, the NYU area. Say his name! George Floyd! And you're seeing people on the fringes start to break windows. to break windows.

Walking down Fifth Avenue, you just see constant store windows being smashed. You see people running off with, like, partially clothed mannequins. And what are the police doing while all this looting is taking place? In a lot of cases, you were seeing police either not really responding or you just weren't seeing them. You know, it felt almost lawless in a way. We had several reports of cops just kind of sitting idly in their cars as people were walking around with suitcases and garbage bags, filling them with stolen goods. I'm surprised the police are already beating up. Now, police, you can see them here. They are bracing, ready for another night of violence.

We have seen these protests begin calm and then quickly turn chaotic as these protests pop up. So on Monday afternoon. Governor Cuomo just announced a curfew will begin at 11 tonight. The governor and Mayor de Blasio also announcing the NYPD will double its presence in the city. The city puts in an 11 p.m. curfew in an effort to kind of deter some of this looting that happened on Sunday night. But we get to Monday night and we get to the curfew and it basically gets worse. You know, we see looters kind of ransack much of midtown Manhattan, Looters kind of ransacked much of midtown Manhattan,

including Herald Square and, you know, ripping the plywood off Macy's, this iconic part of New York. It was only a couple of minutes ago that three suspects were taken out of the store. Even getting into the store. And today it's just one of many places where we have seen these signs of vandalism. We were at a Breitling store. And Ali, what is the reaction come Tuesday to the fact that there has now been basically two nights in a row of really widespread looting in Manhattan? Tuesday is where all of this kind of politically comes to a head. The NYPD and the mayor did not do their job last night. I believe that.

You have Governor Cuomo publicly accusing Bill de Blasio of not protecting the city, of not doing enough to protect New York. And Cuomo even explicitly saying that the NYPD failed to do its job. What happened in New York City was inexcusable. its job. What happened in New York City was inexcusable. I've offered the National Guard. The mayor has said he can handle it with the NYPD. There was this question as to whether Cuomo was going to activate the National Guard or bring in auxiliary police forces to kind of patrol New York. So this all kind of comes to a head on Tuesday. And with that, Mayor de Blasio moves the curfew up from 11 p.m. to 8 p.m. He says there's going to be way more police out on the street.

And there's kind of this implicit acknowledgement that the police are going to be more aggressive so they can crack down on all of this violence and all of this chaos. And we were all, I think, very aware on Tuesday that we could start to see a lot more clashes, a lot more violence between police and protesters. So we get to 8 p.m. and protests are starting to grow. And you have this huge group that starts walking from Brooklyn across the Manhattan Bridge. Outbridge! Outbridge! Outbridge! And as this group from Brooklyn marches across the Manhattan Bridge, they encounter this hugely fortified line of riot police. And it becomes this kind of standoff.

You only make $50,000 a year! Thousands of protesters on the Manhattan Bridge. You have police blocking them from getting into Manhattan. And you start seeing police come over from the Brooklyn side to almost box them in. And we watched this standoff kind of happen for more than an hour. And then some agreement is struck and police allow them to turn around, march peacefully back to Brooklyn, and disperse. So it's like everyone agreed to kind of lower the temperature, despite the fact that there had been this uptick in violence, and despite the fact that the mayor is pushing for a more aggressive approach. Yeah, and it was kind of incredible to watch this just suddenly diffuse in this really tense moment.

Don't shoot! Don't shoot! Don't shoot! So I think we were going out on Wednesday expecting that things might be kind of at a workable place, both between protesters and police. might be kind of at a workable place, both between protesters and police. I head out to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, which has kind of become this central rallying point for a lot of the groups that are walking around Brooklyn. It's about 5 p.m., and I find a couple hundred peaceful protesters.

They're chanting things at cops. There's a moment where they're trying to get a group of police behind barriers to kneel with them. The police don't, but there's no real rise in temperature. And we all kind of are watching our phones for the curfew alert. So we get to 8 p.m. and people at the front of this march take this group of a couple hundred people

marching very peacefully and they just kind of start meandering through downtown Brooklyn. They chant, they take a knee. And something that I noticed is that there was a real effort from organizers to avoid confrontations with police. For example, we were marching at one point and the group turned and you can just kind of see this fortified line of police at the bridges. And there was a real effort from the organizers to say, look, it's past curfew. We don't want anyone to get arrested. We don't want to start a problem where there isn't one. And so there's a concerted effort to take the group away

from those fortified lines of cops. So it seems like this detente you've been describing between protesters and police that started the night before, that is holding. Yes. So the group that I'm with winds up in this big plaza in downtown Brooklyn, and they encounter a single line of riot police. And they chant peacefully. They stay there for probably 10, 15 minutes. And I think they realize they're not getting through and organizers go to turn the group around. So I started to kind of pull myself off to the side so I could observe this happening more.

And behind these protesters in the plaza, I noticed the glint off riot police helmets. And that really struck me because you see these plastic shields and they have this plastic visor across their helmets. And I suddenly realized, oh my God, those aren't protesters. Those are police. Yo, yo, you're fucked up, man. All of a sudden, I start to hear screams. One girl back there hit with a baton.

I saw a protester being carried by, like, three of her friends over to the side of a building. And she had been batoned by a police officer on her knee. And she kind of looked like she was passing out. They laid her down. They were trying to render aid. And I asked her friends, you know, oh my God, what happened? And they said, the police are just hitting people with batons. She didn't do anything. They said the police are just hitting people with batons. She didn't do anything. Get a doctor! Get a fucking doctor!

I see two women in nurses' scrubs trying to render aid to these people. I see one guy who's profusely bleeding from his head. Press hard! Press hard! And you see this line of police behind riot shields just advancing further and further down the street, just screaming, like, move, hold the line, get out. There's just all this mass confusion because people don't know where to go. And on top of that, you have this group of very injured people off to the side.

And I remember I was standing there and I thought police were going to stop. And all of a sudden, I see this baton swing in front of me and everybody just sprinted down the street. And I turned around and I saw a cop holding his riot shield just push this whole group of people on top of this guy whose head was kind of profusely bleeding. And you saw just police try and clear out this area. It was certainly the most tense situation that I had been in, in all of this. Fuck your power! Use your power! Go home! You look ridiculous! Go home! And did you sense that there was any kind of provocation from the protesters that

might explain this sudden advancing and aggression of the police. I've thought back on this a lot, and the only thing that I noticed from my vantage point was a single empty water bottle that was thrown from the protest line toward the police. And that was quite a bit before the police actually began aggressively clearing the street. So I just want to make sure I understand this.

All of a sudden, these peaceful protesters are being penned in by police, kind of like what happened the night before. But instead of any kind of peaceful ending, the police are pretty inexplicably now escalating and in some some cases, beating these protesters without provocation. That is what I saw. I mean, what did you make of that in the moment? It was one of the most confusing situations I've ever seen. To see force so broadly and indiscriminately applied to such a large group of people who, you know, I had witnessed for hours at that point, you know,

actively trying to avoid confrontation with cops, remaining peaceful, it was kind of overwhelming. Seeing how these things escalated so quickly by police. It almost was like a case study for me in like how these things are not supposed to work. Police would actively push people. People would fall and couldn't move fast enough.

So then police would hit them. You know, it was just, it was so confusing and chaotic. And I think the thing that I kept coming back to is I don't know what a person was supposed to do in that moment. You know, where were these protesters supposed to go? where were these protesters supposed to go. And so how did that scene there in that plaza ultimately end? There was actually, graciously, this crazy storm that rolled in. This downpour started, and it was almost like a release valve and everybody just left the plaza

and police cleared it. And the grand irony I've thought about this is that if police had just waited an extra 20 minutes, the place probably would have cleared out on its own. We'll be right back. So, Allie, what do we know about why Wednesday night unfolded in the way that it did in that plaza where you were standing? So there was a really clear shift in tactics that night. You know, the police were clearly being a lot more aggressive and it comes in the greater context of the city kind of feeling like it had failed to control the protests, to keep the city from looting and violence. So there

was a very obvious escalation that in talking to colleagues, we all kind of witnessed across the city, not just in Brooklyn. We saw it in Manhattan. We would later see it in the Bronx. This was a clear shift in the way the police were handling this movement. What's interesting and really surprising is that the protests seem to become ever more peaceful over the course of that few days. And from what you're describing, as that's happening, the police tactics are becoming more violent. It almost felt like police had missed the moment. Like the looting had happened on Sunday and Monday, and then they decided to be very aggressive. At the same time,

organizers, I think, became much more aggressive in self-policing and making sure that they were not letting people who were interested in violence be with the marches. I certainly saw a lot of that. So it felt very jarring, I think, to see the protests become much more peaceful and the policing subsequently become much more aggressive. subsequently become much more aggressive. Allie, was there a rationale in that moment for a significant tactical change from the police? I mean, given what had happened in the nights before and given that a curfew was being openly violated on the streets, was there reason, according to the police,

for a more aggressive approach? Perhaps not what happened in that plaza. That seems like it got very quickly out of control, but for a different approach. So on Thursday, I mean, the day after all of this happened in Brooklyn. Good morning, everybody. The mayor's immediate response was to defend the police. This is not the protest we have known for decades. There is an additional element trying

to create violence. Basically by pointing to what had happened the weekend before and saying, you know, there are people out there who seek to commit violence, who want to loot stores, who want to just go out and cause chaos. And his immediate instinct was to defend the police tactics. So if the NYPD at any given point thinks something is about to get more problematic and undermine peace and undermine order and create violence, they will draw a line. And to say, you know, we will examine any time that there appears to be impropriety, but we need to escalate to make sure things don't continue to get out of hand. It was one of those very disorienting moments as a reporter

of knowing what you're hearing from a public official you've seen with your own eyes was different. I did not see anything but peaceful protests in what I witnessed, and having to square that with his defense was really difficult. Ali, at this point, how representative is what you're seeing in New York beyond New York, across the country, this more aggressive approach by the police towards the protesters?

Well, it's part of this broader phenomenon we're seeing of police behaving extremely aggressively towards otherwise peaceful protesters. Okay, okay, okay. I'm not fighting, I'm not fighting. You know, we see them use rubber bullets and pepper balls in places like Minneapolis and Dallas.

They've been quartering protesters and using tear gas in places like Philadelphia, in places like Washington. There was that really jarring video just this past week of police in Buffalo, New York, just shoving an elderly protester for seemingly no reason. And you watch him on video as this man just falls backwards and cracks his head and starts bleeding out of his ear. You know, he winds up in serious condition at the hospital. What is it that you think accounts for such a police escalation, as you've said, once these protests are becoming mostly peaceful? So we have these kind of established pockets of looting and violence, right? Like we know those happened. We know they were fringe actors. We know they were

fairly limited in scope. But there's this much bigger force at play here, right? You've hundreds of thousands of Americans pouring out onto the street, marching up to police and saying, we fundamentally reject the way you do your job. And then on the other side of that line, you have tens of thousands of police officers who are part of, you know, one of the most deep rooted institutions in American culture, the institution of the police. And, you know, it's a culture of intense loyalty and quote unquote brotherhood. And there's this instinctual defensiveness within police departments and not just specific police departments, but police departments across the country to defend each other and to protect each other. And, you know, I don't know that you can get inside the head of

every policeman who's swinging a baton or behaving violently. But having covered law enforcement and knowing that the culture behaves in that way, I think that informs a lot of the violence that we're seeing from police officers. Right. But the reality is that that reaction from the police only fuels and seems to justify, right, the protesters who are out there. Because they started marching when they witnessed police violence towards George Floyd. And now in response to these demonstrations against that police violence, the police are inflicting more violence. violence, the police are inflicting more violence. And I think that's why this moment feels so open-ended, is because it becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Like, you're responding to protests against police brutality being met with more police brutality, and it just kind of adds fuel to this ongoing fire. It means that the protesters don't have much of a reason

to go home, basically. fuel to this ongoing fire. It means that the protesters don't have much of a reason. To go home, basically. So after this week of really aggressive enforcement by the police that was all caught on video, you know, we're actually seeing the protests get bigger and they're spreading beyond cities. I mean, we're seeing people in suburbs and in rural areas protesting against the police and they're peaceful. And at the same time, the police seem to have kind of backed off some of these aggressive enforcement tactics. And it feels like there has been some kind of power shift. enforcement tactics. And it feels like there has been some kind of power shift. And how would you describe that power shift?

Well, it's really difficult for police to continue behaving this aggressively when there's people constantly out there watching your every move, right? And we saw some of that happen this past week. Good morning, everybody. You know, Bill de Blasio, for example, had to kind of back off his defense of the police department. Last Friday, an officer in Brooklyn shoved a woman to the ground, shoved a protester to the ground. And commit to investigations and potential suspensions

and charges for officers who were found to have acted improperly. That officer has been suspended without pay. Further disciplinary action will commence. So you have this happening where politicians and departments are being confronted with this constantly. But, you know, the culture of the police department is a real institution and it doesn't change overnight and it's difficult to change. And I think something that I keep thinking of, if you go back to this incident in Buffalo, where we all kind of saw this really jarring video of two police officers shoving this elderly protester to the ground. And those two officers were charged with assault. And even despite

so many people seeing this video and the public backlash, those two officers walked out of court after being charged. And there were dozens of fellow officers outside applauding them. of fellow officers outside applauding them. And I think that scene just really captures how difficult it's going to be to have lasting change to policing in this country. Allie, thank you very much. Thanks for having me. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. Jacob Fry, we have a yes or no question for you. Yes or no, will you commit to defunding Minneapolis Police Department? On Saturday, protesters in Minneapolis marched to the home of the city's mayor, Jacob Fry, and demanded to know if he would commit to defunding the city's police department in the wake of George Floyd's death. We don't want no more police. Is that clear? Police Department in the wake be quiet y'all. Be quiet, because it's important that we actually hear this. It's important that we hear this, because if y'all don't know, he's up for re-election next year. If y'all don't know, he's up for re-election next year.

And if he says no, guess what the fuck we gonna do next year? Get the fuck outta here! What's your title? Louder? Louder? Louder? Louder? Louder?

Louder? Louder? Louder? Louder? Louder? Louder? Louder? Louder? Louder? Louder? Louder? Louder? Stop lying! Don't waste our time! Get the fuck out of here!

Get the fuck out! Go home, Jacob! Go home! Go home, Jacob! Go home! Go home, Jacob! The next day, nine members of the Minneapolis City Council, a veto-proof majority over the mayor, pledged to dismantle the city's police department. The council members promised to create a new public safety system in place of the police, as many protesters in Minneapolis and around the country have demanded.

Meanwhile, in New York, Mayor de Blasio said he would cut the police department's budget, which exceeds $6 billion, and redistribute the money to social service programs. And in Washington, President Trump said he ordered the National Guard to begin withdrawing from the city, backing down from his threat to militarize the government's response to the protests. The president explained the decision by claiming that fewer protesters were showing up in Washington, even as protests there appeared to grow, drawing Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, who appeared to become the first Republican senator to join the protests. Hey, Senator, why is it important for you to be out here today?

We need a voice against racism. We need many voices against racism and against brutality. We need to stand up and say that Black Lives Matter. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.