A LONG AWAITED FOR STUDY OF HOW THE NYPD ABUSED BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS AT OWS

A LONG AWAITED FOR STUDY OF HOW THE NYPD ABUSED BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS AT OWS

July 30, 2012 at 10:13 (Activism, Corrupt Politics, Dictatorship, Economy, Occupy Wall Street, Police Brutality)

US police show epidemic suppression of protests

The NYPD ‘consistently violated basic rights’ during the Occupy Wall
Street protests and showed a ‘shocking level of impunity’, when dealing
with protesters, according to a new study (pdf), published on Wednesday.

Protesters screamed in pain after police cornered them and sprayed
them with pepper spray at an Occupy Wall Street Protest (Photo/Jefferson
Siegel)

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The report, by the Global Justice Clinic at New York University’s
School of Law and the Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic
at Fordham Law School, conducted over an eight month period,examined hours
of video footage, documents, press reports, and conducted extensive
interviews with protestors and witnesses from the Occupy protests and
encampments. The findings paint a disturbing portrait: authorities
across the US will now suppress protest at all cost, even if protests
are lawful, peaceful, and of no threat to the general public.

The study details the increasingly common practices of “excessive
police use of force against protesters, bystanders, journalists, and
legal observers; constant obstructions of media freedoms, including
arrests of journalists; unjustified and sometimes violent closure of
public space, dispersal of peaceful assemblies, and corralling and
trapping protesters en masse,” the report states.

“Pervasive surveillance of peaceful political activity, arbitrary and
selective rule enforcement, and restrictions on independent protest
monitoring also raise serious concerns. The government has also failed
to make transparent critical policies concerning law enforcement
activities.”

The report is the first section of a several part series covering
police response to Occupy protests in cities around the US, revealing a
national epidemic abusive of power.

Sarah Knuckey, at NYU School of Law, told the Guardian: “All
the case studies we collected show the police are violating basic
rights consistently, and the level of impunity is shocking”.

“Many interviewees cried while speaking about their interaction with the police – they still carried a sense of trauma.”

The report lists a total of 130 incidents of excessive or unwarranted force by New York police.

The authors of the report are using the research as a basis of
written complaints made Thursday to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg,
the NYPD, the state department of justice and the United Nations.

The report claims the NYPD has also violated international human rights law, stating:

“Full respect for assembly and expression rights is necessary for
democratic participation, the exchange of ideas, and for securing
positive social reform. The rights are guaranteed in

international law binding upon the United States. Yet U.S. authorities
have engaged in persistent breaches of protest rights since the start of
Occupy Wall Street.”

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