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 Handschu Agreement

Note how NYPD filmed the evacuation of Liberty Square/Zuccotti Park :

Are NYPD Intelligence Division violating terms of the Handschu Agreement ?

On September 6, 2012, activists against the Fracking Pipeline that is proposed to run through the West Village organised a demonstration along the West Side Highway. At that protest, a white shirt police officer was caught video taping lawful political activities of the protesters. If the protesters were only engaged in lawful political activities on September 6, as it surely does appear, then does the monitoring of the protesters by the NYPD not violate the Handschu Agreement ?

The Handschu agreement is a court ruling from the case Handschu v. Special Services Division, 605 F.Supp. 1384, affirmed 787 F.2d 828, that brought about guidelines that regulate police behavior in New York City with regard to police monitoring of citizens' political activity (Wikipedia).

A large coalition of activist groups accused police of compiling information to punish and repress lawful dissent, according to Wikipedia.

For the last year, the NYPD and the Bloomberg administration have been monitoring the Occupy Wall Street movement since before activists began their occupation in Liberty Square. In 2011, NYPD used camcorders to videotape protesters during a march against the execution of Troy Davis. On one occasion, in 2012, Occupy activists caught the NYPD engaged in monitoring the lawful political activities by #OWS.

Because New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gives direct orders to NYPD, what kind of approval has he made about any illegal monitoring acts by the New York Police Department ? Does this video appear to show that NYPD Intelligence Division assault reporters, block news cameras, and attack the Freedom of the Press to benefit Mayor Bloomberg ?

Are Bloomberg, Kelly, and NYPD Lawless ?

The New York Police Department may be involved in some unlawful activities, reported Jason Leopold and Matthew Harwood on Truthout. (If the NYPD has become lawless, then are social movement activists being targeted for silence and arrest to prevent government reforms that would hold police accountable ?)

According to an e-mail that was leaked by Anonymous, a high-ranking FBI official repeated information on a what appears to be an official listserv :

I keep telling you, you and I are going to laugh and raise a beer one day, when everything Intel (NYPD's Intelligence Division) has been involved in during the last 10 years comes out - it always eventually comes out. They are going to make [former FBI Director J. Edgar] Hoover, COINTEL, Red Squads, etc look like rank amatures [sic] compared to some of the damn right felonious activity, and violations of US citizen's rights they have been engaged in.

During the last 10 years, Michael Bloomberg has been mayor and Raymond Kelly has been commissioner of the police department.

Are citizens living under laws of order that do not apply to police ? These and other important questions are raised from the information, which was contained in an e-mail sent to Fred Burton, a former counterterrorism official at the State Department, who is now an intelligence officer at Stratfor.

Read more : Hacked Intel Email: NYPD Involved in ''Damn Right Felonious Activity''