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De Blasio Says His NYPD Commissioner Didn’t Know That Helicopters, Dogs, Dozens Of Cops Would Stake Out BLM Organizer’s Home
By
Gwynne Hogan
Published Aug 11, 2020
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Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
By
Gwynne Hogan
Published Aug 11, 2020
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Helicopters, police dogs, and dozens of cops swarmed the Hell’s Kitchen home of a Black Lives Matter activist on Friday afternoon, but according to Mayor Bill de Blasio, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea didn’t know about the five-hour standoff until it was well under way.
“The Commissioner doesn't get involved in each specific decision to pursue someone,” de Blasio told reporters on Tuesday morning. “I assure you, he's got a massive operation to run. But when he found out what was going on, he called off the operation. It was not the right thing to do.”
The NYPD was attempting to arrest 28-year-old Derrick Ingram, a co-founder of Warriors in the Garden, a collective of activists formed following the death of George Floyd, but left empty-handed once the commissioner ordered them to stand down.
Ingram is accused of shouting in the ear of a police officer with a bullhorn during a June 14th protest in Midtown, causing her temporary hearing loss, according to police and prosecutors. Ingram turned himself in on Saturday morning. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office lowered charges against him from a felony assault on a police officer, to misdemeanor assault in the third-degree, and condemned the tactics used by the NYPD to attempt to apprehend him.
Ingram described being woken up by members of the NYPD’s warrant squad around 7 a.m. Friday morning, though they wouldn’t provide him with a copy of a warrant for his arrest. He refused to open the door until they showed him one, and live-streamed the encounter from his living room, as crowds of his supporters gathered below.
De Blasio added he and the Commissioner had talked about “specific changes to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again,” but declined to say what those changes were, or if any NYPD leadership involved in planning the operation would face disciplinary measures. He added that the officer Ingram allegedly assaulted with his voice had to go to the hospital for treatment.
“Anything that constitutes an assault on the officer; there will be consequences. Period,” de Blasio said.
Ingram is due back in court in November. His attorney, Dorothy Weldon, with New York City Defender Services, said if Commissioner Shea was unaware of the raid, “that raises even more troubling questions than it answers.”
She added the Mayor’s refusal to comment on disciplinary action, “can only be interpreted as a tacit endorsement of the NYPD’s shocking tactics, which at a minimum amounted to a gross interference with my client’s free speech and other constitutional rights and a disturbing willingness to waste taxpayer resources while the city faces a budget crisis."
The attempted arrest follows an earlier controversial apprehension of an 18-year-old activist by plainclothes officers in an unmarked car for allegedly damaging NYPD cameras weeks earlier. Following that incident protesters had once again mounted calls for Commissioner Shea to resign.
When asked about the message it sent to New Yorkers, that the NYPD was using helicopters and dogs and unmarked vans to arrest political activists for low-level offenses, Blasio said he was concerned.
“I think we have to make clear that..this police department is never going to interfere with people's right to protest...And these kinds of things often send the wrong message and we have to be smart enough to not let that happen,” he said. “Now, the underlying offenses, they’re still offenses. In one case vandalizing city property and breaking city property. In the other case, an assault on the officer. There has to be a consequence in both cases, but it's how you do it, when you do it.”
Councilman Donovan Richards, who oversees the public safety committee, didn’t return a request for comment immediately. City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who represents the district where Ingram lives and had denounced the raid on Twitter, didn’t immediately respond to a further request for comment.
The Friday standoff was condemned by the American Civil Liberties Union, who called it “overreach and intimidation” and said the tactics used “should concern us all.” Meanwhile, Maya Wiley, the former counsel to de Blasio and Chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board who is mounting a bid for mayor come 2021, cited Thurgood Marshall’s 1972 Supreme Court opinion on rights of protesters, saying she feared the charges against Ingram were a deliberate attempt to quash his free speech.
“The First Amendment means our government does not get to restrict our expression because it does not like the ideal, the content, subject matter, or expression itself, and that’s exactly what this appears to be. The police didn’t like the message,” she said, in a video posted to Twitter Monday. “We have a New York City Mayor who has not taken any action against a Commissioner who claimed that we did not have sufficient resources to protect our residents from crime, but we have enough resources to lay siege on a resident for his free expression.”
Speaking four days after the NYPD stakeout of his apartment, Ingram, who goes by Dwreck, said he was still rattled by what happened, and added that he felt protected by all the support he received during and after the ordeal. "One of my largest fears is that this happens to someone who doesn’t have he same platform,” he said, adding that his group is now “more focused on action."
"I truly believe if Bill de Blasio isn’t corrupt and cares about Black lives as he says he does, he would stop with the photo ops and painting things...and he would hold Commissioner Shea and the NYPD accountable for terrorizing me.”
Tagged
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dermot shea
black lives matter
Gwynne Hogan
Gwynne Hogan is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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