Mayor de Blasio Says Violent Protests Won’t Be Tolerated, Continues to Call Most Protests “Peaceful”

By Yehudit Garmaise

Last night, 60 anti-Trump protesters took part in a what was described as a march against President Trump were arrested in Manhattan for setting fires and punching and spitting in the faces of police, who confiscated weapons such as tasers.

   When asked about the protests last night in Manhattan, Mayor Bill de Blasio offered his oft-repeated phrase, “What we have seen for six months, is peaceful protests, managed peacefully by the NYPD, that is just the overwhelming reality. I have seen so much of it with my own eyes, I get the reports of it all the time.”

   One reporter wondered whether, as tension mounts as the final votes are counted, whether parts of the city will be blocked off. Other reporters wondered whether violent protesters will be dealt with severely, or will they be “just be given tickets?”

“Anyone who does violence clearly will experience the consequences of it,” the mayor said. “You cannot violence with consequences. It is as simple as that.

  So you are not supposed to set fires, that is really dangerous, I want to remind people. Setting fires can lead to something really horrible. Can won’t tolerate that. We won’t tolerate attacks on anybody. So, we are going to deal with it, and the court system, which is now increasingly ramping up, is going to deal with it as well.”

    Mayor de Blasio and others have blamed the escalation of violence from what they call “otherwise peaceful protests” on people who come from “elsewhere” to “highjack the protests.”

    For instance, some reporters said that Devina Singh, the woman who, last night was charged with spitting in the face of an NYDP sergeant, inexplicably came from Philadelphia to protest and cause trouble.

                 When Singh was asked why she spat in a police officer’s face, while demonstrating with a left-wing radical ground that was chanting “Burn the precinct to the ground!” she said that “cops were “attacking people by “hitting them with their bikes repeatedly.”

               However one witness to this event saw that what happened reported that while police who were riding bicycles alongside protestors, as they are trained to do, a domino effect of chaos was sparked when some police who bumped into each other or protestors spurred som chaotic shoving, tackling, and arrests.

    To prevent scuffles with police the mayor explained that people who organize protests should organize in advance with police to to plan routes and to request police who will accompany protestors to maximize safety.

      “The broader approach is to facilitate and respect peaceful protests,” said the mayor, who emphasized that the approach of the NYPD for any violent protests is to always de-escalate.

      “There have been some situations where police officers did the wrong thing and for that there need to be consequences and discipline.

     Perhaps contradicting the mayor's assessment of the protests of the last six months, the NYPD has created a Looting Task Force to investigate any acts of looting that can potentially occur,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison said in a video posted to Twitter.

           “The Looting Task Force,” Chief Harrison said, “is equipped with the department’s latest technology and video monitoring software to help them investigate these criminal acts thoroughly, help identify perpetrators, and bring them to justice,”

    After Lower Manhattan and Midtown experienced widespread looting over the summer, the Task Force said that its charge is to identify those looters, police sources said.

            After their experiences over the summer, many stores in Manhattan used plywood over their glass storefronts in preparation for expected election unrest.

     Repeating his favorite phrase, the mayor said, “The vast majority of people who protest, protest peacefully, we know that, the vast majority who come out, come out of concern for their community and their country. Very few do acts of violence, but for those who do violence, there will be real consequences for them.”

Credit: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office.