This report is based on interviews or written accounts from 81 people who participated in the Mott Haven protest, interviews with 19 other community members, lawyers, activists, and city officials, and analysis of 155 videos that were recorded during the protest. They beat up protesters, conducted mass arrests, and fired teargas, pepper spray, stun grenades, and rubber bullets to disperse and discourage protests. Law enforcement officers across the United States responded to many of these largely peaceful protests with violence, excessive force, and abuse. #HAS OBAMA SPENT MONEY ON BODY CAMERAS FOR POLICE OFFICERS SERIES#Floyd’s was the latest in a series of high-profile killings of unarmed Black people by police in the country. The protest in Mott Haven was one of hundreds that broke out across New York City and the wider United States following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25. Clearly identified medics and legal observers were among those targeted, as police beat a number of them, detained them and obstructed their work.Īmbulances eventually arrived, and a medic who was zip-tied at the time said that he saw at least three people carried away on stretchers: “ handcuffed to the stretchers, with head bandages, visibly bleeding from the bandage.” They forced people to sit on the street with their hands zip-tied behind their backs, at times so tight that their hands went numb. “Somewhere in the process of being cuffed, I had a knee on my neck.”Īs protesters cried out – some with blood dripping down their faces – the police began to arrest them. “Then they dragged me on the ground and beat me with batons,” he said. “Then it’s kind of all a blur,” one protester said, recounting how a police officer punched him in the face, another twisted his finger and broke it, and a third pulled off his Covid-19 face mask and doused him with pepper spray. and the start of the city-wide curfew – imposed a few days earlier due to looting in other areas– the police moved in on the protesters, unprovoked and without warning, whaling their batons, beating people from car tops, shoving them down to the ground, and firing pepper spray in their faces. Many started chanting, “Let Us Go!” and one person cried out, “You’re gonna kill us – I can’t breathe.” “We were being packed and packed like sardines,” one protester later recalled. Bicycle police used their bikes to form a wall and prevented the protesters from moving forward, while other officers pushed from behind – a tactic known as “kettling.” The protesters were trapped, with no way to disperse. curfew went into effect, the marchers encountered scores of police officers with riot gear, including helmets, shields, and batons. Less than an hour into the march, and about 10 minutes before an 8 p.m. On the evening of June 4, 2020, about 300 people marched peacefully through Mott Haven, a low-income neighborhood in New York City’s South Bronx, to protest police violence and systemic racism.
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