Eric Adams Applauds NYPD After Violent Arrests of Pro-Palestinian Demonstrators
“I take my hat off to the police department,” the mayor said, after cops threw protesters to the ground and punched them in Bay Ridge this weekend.
New York Police Department officers violently arrested several pro-Palestinian protesters at a rally in Bay Ridge on Saturday, throwing demonstrators to the ground and punching them. On Monday morning, New York Mayor Eric Adams applauded the NYPD’s response.
“I take my hat off to the police department for how they handled an unruly group of people,” Adams said on NY1. While Adams stated that the city is reviewing the “isolated incident” caught on-camera in which a police officer punches a protester, videos posted to social media showed multiple acts of police violence as they pushed to disperse the protest, which commemorated the displacement of Palestinians in 1948. Officers arrested 40 people overall.
LT Michael Butler strikes a staff member of the mayors office twice, once directly in the face, then from behind. LT Jesse Lang looks on w/ a sickening, gleeful smile. SRG take that display of violence as their cue to arrest him, clawing at his clothes to drag him to the ground. pic.twitter.com/WahOwHKTYW
— Josh Pacheco (They/Them) (@JP_OTG) May 19, 2024
NOW: NYPD officers tackle a pro-Palestine protester to the ground and are seen punching the protester in what appears to be their upper body
— katie smith (@probablyreadit) May 18, 2024
The situation in Bay Ridge has escalated rapidly in the past few minutes — at least a dozen arrests pic.twitter.com/fIu5hnR5Mw
NOW: As pro-Palestine protesters reached an intersection, officers rushed in and grabbed people out of the crowd seemingly at random
— katie smith (@probablyreadit) May 18, 2024
Officers tackled multiple protesters to the ground and then proceeded to punch them pic.twitter.com/fyPfA8emyM
Shortly after, two circles of NYPD surround a violent arrest of a protester, tackled by an entire mob of SRG. He is grabbed by his hair, then hood of his jacket, and his face pushed is into the ground. pic.twitter.com/yipErsFo34
— Josh Pacheco (They/Them) (@JP_OTG) May 19, 2024
In an appearance on Fox 5 later on Monday, Adams also said that many demonstrators were “from outside the city and outside the Bay Ridge area,” even though Bay Ridge has one of the largest populations of Palestinians in New York City. Blaming outsiders has become a familiar refrain for the NYPD: Leadership pointed the finger at out-of-towners amid chaotic protests in 2020 and repeated that line after arrests at Columbia and City College, though the NYPD later acknowledged that a large majority of those detained at the school were students.
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