by BILL VAN AUKEN
New York City’s billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has endorsed the police operation in which some 700 peaceful protesters were arrested Saturday on the Brooklyn Bridge.
It was the largest mass arrest in the city since the NYPD rounded up some 1,800 protesters outside the Republican National Convention in 2004. Many of those who participated in Saturday’s march have charged that police deliberately deceived them, using agents provocateurs to lead unwitting marchers into a pre-prepared trap.
While the arrests resulted in the issuing of minor summonses, ranging from disorderly conduct to blocking traffic, the effect was to put hundreds of non-violent demonstrators “through the system,” photographing and finger-printing them and throwing them into precinct holding cells for many hours. Nine individuals, who either lacked identification or had prior summonses, were locked up for 24 hours or more.
Bloomberg, whose net worth of some $19.5 billion is derived from Wall Street, voiced unqualified support for the police repression on the Brooklyn Bridge.
“The police did exactly what they are supposed to do,” he told reporters Sunday before marching in the Pulaski Day Parade. He declared that New York City “is the place where you can come to express your views. Protesting is fine, but you don’t have the right to go and without a permit violate the law.”
In reality, with or without permit, the city and its police department have increasingly restricted protest. They have used barricades to pen in and block demonstrations, employed undercover infiltrators and agents provocateurs to spy upon and entrap those participating and used excessive force, including beatings, pepper spray and mounted police charges to suppress unresisting demonstrators.
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