New NYCLU Webpage Reports Trends in NYPD Infringement on Protest Rights

The webpage contains four reports documenting the NYPD’s policing of the Occupy Wall Street protests from March 17 to June 17. Future reports will also be posted on the webpage and announced through the NYCLU’s Facebook page and Twitter feed.

“Since the Occupy Wall Street movement launched, we’ve seen NYPD officers repeatedly violate the constitutional rights of protestors and journalists through intimidation, harassment, excessive force, unlawful arrests and other misconduct,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said. “The purpose of this new webpage is to document these abuses, particularly the under-the-radar harassment that never makes headlines, to help us to hold police accountable for disrespecting the rights to protest and assembly– core American freedoms.”

The webpage’s goal is to highlight the fact that low-profile police harassment is just as pervasive and threatening to freedom of speech and assembly as occasional, highly publicized incidents of mass arrests and excessive force.

The webpage will be updated with periodic reports summarizing recent police activity to identify and analyze trends that have a chilling effect on protest and other First Amendment-protected expression. The reports consist of observations from NYCLU legal observers, accounts of protesters and bystanders, news reports and video. The reports will cover a broad range of police activity, including unnecessary use of force, interference with reporters and legal observers, the improper use of metal barricades and other physical barriers, harassment, selective enforcement, and false arrests.

“While the media has primarily shed light on high-profile incidents of mass arrests and excessive force, the countless low-profile incidents of police intimidation and harassment represent an significant threat to protest and is a tremendous waste of scarce public resources,” Katherine Bromberg, the NYCLU’s Occupy Wall Street coordinator, said. “We’re going to expose those incidents to provide a more complete picture of how the NYPD’s tactics infringe on people’s right to protest.”

The aggressive policing of OWS-related protest is not just a problem in New York City. ACLU affiliates across the nation, including in Hawaii, Oakland and Denver, have observed similar mistreatment of protesters.

The NYCLU’s reporting project complements Suppressing Protest: Human Rights Violations in the U.S. Response to Occupy Wall Street, a major report released yesterday, that details the response to Occupy Wall Street by federal, state and local governments. The report, produced by international human rights and U.S. civil liberties experts at seven law school clinics, provides a detailed examination of whether government respected expression and assembly rights during the Occupy protests last fall.

“The NYCLU has spent hundreds of hours on the streets monitoring the NYPD’s low-profile campaign against protest and assembly,” NYCLU Senior Staff Attorney Taylor Pendergrass said. “With the Free Speech Threat Assessment reports, we are ensuring that the public gets to see what we have been seeing on the streets for months—the NYPD’s unrelenting surveillance and harassment of protestors.”

People who observe law enforcement officers intimidating, harassing or otherwise infringing on the right of people to protest are encouraged to share their stories with the NYCLU by emailing protest@nyclu.org. The webpage will report on all types of protest events, including Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.

Visit Free Speech Threat Assessment at www.nyclu.org/NYCprotest