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Video: Cops Mace Revelers at Dominican Day Parade
By
John Del Signore
Published Aug 17, 2010
Modified Aug 17, 2010
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By
John Del Signore
Published Aug 17, 2010
Modified Aug 17, 2010
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The website Rhythm and Bleu has posted a series of from-the-hip videos from the Dominican Day Parade on August 8th. Most of the videos, shot in Washington Heights, show revelers crowding the streets, playing music, singing, and grinding together like millstones in a gristmill. It's all good clean fun, but then the cops had to roll up. As an NYPD cruiser and an unmarked cop car slowly make their way through the massive, chanting crowd, two plainclothes officers suddenly exit the vehicle and spray mace at the bystanders, seemingly without warning. This occurs at the 1:38 mark.
A chaotic scene ensues, with glass bottles hurled at the cop car as the crowd disperses. (At the 4:22 mark one man is seen hunched over with a towel over his eyes moaning, "They maced me.") Soon what looks to be a dozen plainclothes officer descend on the area, batons out, and drive off the remaining stragglers. And so the Dominican Day Parade 2010 came to a close. (Also, a pregnant teen was stabbed in the head.) The unidentified man who shot these videos concedes they are edited, but he tells PIX 11 News "what's missing from the clip are only the portions when he had to stop recording, after he says his eyes started burning from the mace."
Tagged
dominican day parade
Washington Heights
mace
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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