A new chapter in the repression to the left of the police department

Former police commissioner Raymond W. Kelly later described the department's conduct as one of his "best hours".

In 2012, a federal judge said mass arrests of demonstrators by the department were illegal. Two years later, the city ended up paying close to $ 18 million in damages to settle civil rights claims. And earlier, during protests in the Iraq war in 2003, the Mounted Police indicted unprovoked groups of protesters; civil liberties groups have taken notice.

According to the police, groups such as the Proud Boys – which the department is aware of, "according to a spokesperson, and others marrying far-right ideologies are followed by the Major Investigations Section of its intelligence office. , but it is unclear how prepared the department is to cope with a virulent fanaticism.On last year, a white Baltimore supremacist went to New York for the sole purpose of killing black men. is rendered after stabbing fatally Timothy Caughman, 66, with a sword in Midtown Manhattan.

In the second quarter of this year, complaints of criminal assault classified as hate crimes almost tripled compared to the first quarter, to 14, and during the summer, a group of white supremacists named Identify Evropa deployed a banner to Fort Tryon Park, in Upper Manhattan, to end immigration. Congressman Adriano Espaillat, a Democrat who represents the largely Dominican district, held a vigil a few days later after the rally.

He told me that he could not remember any police presence at the original event.

Incursions of groups like Identify Evropa or Proud Boys are a relatively new phenomenon in New York. But Portland, Oregon, for example, has been trying for some time to quell violent and frequent clashes between these groups and anti-fascist protesters.

Here again, the issue of police bias was intensely debated. On Monday, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler told local reporters that during a political protest in August, police found members of a far-right group called Patriot Prayer on a car parking on the roof before a demonstration in downtown. They were armed with guns, the police said, but no arrests were made.

The police claimed that all discovered firearms had been licensed and that group members had followed their instructions.