Judge Rules That NYPD Made Illegal Arrests During 2004 GOP Convention

Judge Rules That The Mass Arrests Carried Out By The Bloomberg Administration During The 2004 Republican National Convention Were Illegal

Federal District Court Judge Richard J. Sullivan has ruled that officers with the New York Police Department illegally arrested large numbers of protesters at a demonstration on Fulton Street in Downtown Manhattan during the 2004 Republican National Convention, The New York Times has reported.

Judge Sullivan's ruling faulted the Bloomberg administration for having "lacked the required probable cause because the police were unaware of whether each individual protester had broken the law," The Times reported.

“With this ruling,” said Christopher T. Dunn, a lawyer with the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), “the time has come for the city to put this controversy behind it, to settle the rest of the convention cases, and to make sure that mass arrests never happen again here.”

Mr. Dunn noted that the judge had “emphatically rejected the city’s claim that it could make mass arrests of protesters.”

The NYCLU represents some of the activists, who were arrested.

Michael Bloomberg Michael Powell Parody

Is the Rudin Family the Mother Teresa of real estate ? Really ?

The artist and political commentator Suzannah B. Troy has fun with Michael Powell, a reporter for The New York Times, about how the Bloomberg administration exerts control over the press.

'' At least since the Republican National Convention of 2004, our police have grown accustomed to forcibly penning, arresting, and sometimes spraying and whacking protesters and reporters. On Monday, The New York Times and 12 other organizations sent a letter of protest to the Police Department. 'The police actions of last week,' the authors said, 'have been more hostile to the press than any other event in recent memory,' '' wrote Mr. Powell.

Bloomberg Carries Out Mass Arrests -- Again

Live Mass Arrests on the Brooklyn Bridge #occupywallstreet - Streaming Video by We are Change

In a flashback to the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, >police rounded up and arrested over 700 activists on the Brooklyn Bridge during a political demonstration.

Police said that those activists, who impeded vehicular traffic on the bridge were were arrested. But The New York Times reported that "many protesters said they believed the police had tricked them, allowing them onto the bridge, and even escorting them partway across, only to trap them in orange netting after hundreds had entered." Look at this independent video :

Some of the activists, who were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge, had their hands bound with plastic ties that the NYPD has used at other mass demonstration. Separately, the NYPD admitted that they police force had taken their own videos of the protesters, who had taken part in the demonstration, deliberately and intentionally tracking and monitoring the peaceful activists.

Attorney Wylie Stecklow, whose law firm represents many of the activists, who were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge, said that the pattern of the NYPD's behaviour toward the Occupy Wall Street protesters was reminiscent of the mass arrests that police made during the 2004 Republican National Convention.

Troy Davis NYPD Excessive Force

Video of the flashmob protest last Thursday night -- one day after the execution of Troy Davis, a man believed to be innocent of the crimes charged against him. Protesters were harassed by NYPD, pushed and shoved, and one protester was peeled away from the crowd, shoved the floor, and arrested.

Is Mayor Michael Bloomberg sanctioning this kind of behaviour by the NYPD ? What is City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's opinion about the NYPD's use of weapons and vehicles against passionate citizen assembly in protest of the death penalty ? Activists worry that Mayor Bloomberg will again resort to mass arrests, the same way he wholesale violated due process and civil liberties during the 2004 Republican National Convention.

Bloomberg opposes free speech

Freedom of Speech doesn't exist under Mike Bloomberg's version of New York.

"Shocking video clips of police brutality and arrests during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. Mayor Michael Bloomberg directed the NYPD to stifle Constitutional rights of free speech and freedom of assembly by stopping any 'protests' that may embarrass George W. Bush and the Republican party. Clips in this video are two days before the Convention even began, when police arrested 250 people during the Critical Mass bike ride, a non-partisan event which has occurred every month since 1994. Even more shocking, many of those being arrested had nothing to do with the bike ride, but had the misfortune of crossing the street while this was happening. Clips are from the documentary 'Watch This!' by Glass Bead Collective released under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC) license."

Part 1 :

Part 2 :

Bloomberg arrests protesters at GOP Convention

Bloomberg loves Bush

"In 2004, during the Republican National Convention in New York, Mayor Bloomberg attempted to stifle free speech by denying permits for any protests. He then directed the NYPD to arrest anybody who was demonstrating."

"Police sealed off streets and surrounded peaceful crowds with netting, and proceeded to beat and arrest people indiscriminately. Even spectators and passerbys were arrested. People who were arrested were held for days in a filthy former bus depot."

Mike Bloomberg endorses miserable failure and radical Republican George W. Bush.

Mike Bloomberg is a Republican.

Please visit Huffington Post for information about the most recent Republican National Convention.

Michael Bloomberg Loves George W. Bush

Flashback: 2004 at the Republican National Convention

Remember: Michael Bloomberg is a Republican at heart.

Bloomberg's undercovery spy campaign revealed

Mayor Bloomberg has a history of spying on protest groups during the 2004 Republican National Convention. Now, his third term re-election staff have started spying on Bill Thompson's campaign events.

Remember when, back in 2004, Mayor Michael Bloomberg admitted that he had ordered the NYPD to collect surveillance on groups protesting the Republican National Convention ?

Well, now comes the blogger Roy Edroso of The Village Voice, and he has reported that Mayor Bloomberg's campaign operatives are shopping around secretly-recorded audio tapes to humiliate NYC Mayoral candidate Bill Thompson. It is known that at least one media outlet, The New York Post, has been taken this bait.

"The Post says his operatives sent them a tape of Bill Thompson not reacting when the co-owner of the delightful West Village Brit boite Tea and Sympathy called Christine Quinn a "whore." "

The prefabricated outrage that is being intentionally generated by this scandal is ludicrous. Restauranteur Sean Kavanagh-Dowsett's only wrong-doing was that he had no thesaurus within easy reach; his poor choice of an adjective to describe a sell-out is understandable. When I can't think of a word to describe my disappointment in someone, I usually do turn to profanity as a literary clutch.

Meanwhile, it seems Nixon-esque for Mayor Bloomberg's political campaign to go around audio-taping his rival's campaign events. Should that be cause for more concern than the wrong use of the word, "whore?"

It is a matter of trust: No third term for Michael Bloomberg

An open letter to Michael Bloomberg

Running for mayor means that you are asking the citizens of New York for their trust. Based on your record of the last 8 years, we know all too well that we cannot trust you. No, sir. Not at all.

When ConEdison neglected its infrastructure, and the lights went out in my neighborhood of Astoria for two weeks, days had to pass before you realized that 174,000 people were both without power and powerless to do anything about it. Being mayor means that we depend and rely on you to stand up for us.

When George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, many New Yorkers did not support the war. Even though we had proper permits, NYPD put up barricades and the MTA shut down subways – to keep us from peacefully attending our rallies. We have a right to gather and express ourselves. Our mayor should not be suppressing the voices in our community.

After you won the bid to host the 2004 Republican National Convention in our city, you thought it was perfectly fine to arrest over 1,800 protesters. The people you arrested were detained under false pretenses – until a court threatened to fine the city, effectively forcing you to set them free. I wasn’t arrested, but, at the time, I belonged to a small group called, “Gays Against Bush.” The New York Times reported that NYPD was collecting information about our meetings and our rallies. How can the citizens trust their mayor, when he is so quick to squash our freedom of expression ?

For the 8 straight years that you have been in office, the Rent Guidelines Board has systematically raised regulated rents in our city. And any time that the MTA has wanted to jack up our fares, it gets away with it. You haven’t even noticed that NYU is the second-coming of Robert Moses, because while NYU is tearing down historical houses or evicting cultural landmarks, you have been busy closing down firehouses and advocating for the construction of more football stadiums.

The city has changed under your 2 terms, and not for the better. You are constitutionally incapable of relating to the concerns of the average New Yorker. And now you come, asking us to trust you with four more years ? You don’t know what trust means, Mr. Mayor. It means that we give you our permission to run our city for 2 terms, and you return it to us unharmed after your two terms are over.

After voters have twice passed a referendum for term limits, why would you unilaterally help yourself to a third term ? The answer is because you cannot be trusted. We can no longer trust you to run our city. After these 2 long terms, there is no longer any trust left to give.