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.

NYPD Muslim Spying Program Has Been A Total Waste

AP : The NYPD spying program on Muslim led to no leads or any terror cases

The Demographics Unit at the NYPD was the central command of the Bloomberg administration's police spying program, the Associated Press reported. The Demographics Unit was "built with help from the CIA, which assembled databases on where Muslims lived, shopped, worked and prayed." The NYPD spies "infiltrated Muslim student groups, put informants in mosques, monitored sermons and catalogued every Muslim in New York who adopted new, Americanized surnames."

"Police hoped the Demographics Unit would serve as an early warning system for terrorism. And if police ever got a tip about, say, an Afghan terrorist in the city, they'd know where he was likely to rent a room, buy groceries and watch sports."

In testimony provided in a June 28 deposition as part of a longstanding federal civil rights case, NYPD Assistant Chief Thomas Galati said that none of the conversations the spying police officers overheard ever led to a case. "Related to Demographics," Galati testified that information that has come in "has not commenced an investigation."

"The NYPD is the largest police department in the nation and Mayor Michael Bloomberg has held up its counterterrorism tactics as a model for the rest of the country," according to the AP report. ... "Galati testified as part of a lawsuit that began in 1971 over NYPD spying on students, civil rights groups and suspected Communist sympathizers during the 1950s and 1960s. The lawsuit, known as the Handschu case, resulted in federal guidelines that prohibit the NYPD from collecting information about political speech unless it is related to potential terrorism. Civil rights lawyers believe the Demographics Unit violated those rules." ...

Read more : AP : The NYPD spying program on Muslim led to no leads or any terror cases

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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.