The scene at Manhattan Criminal Court was as if a Batman villain had returned to Gotham for a daring court room heist. Protesters, and counter-protesters, had gathered across the street. A patchwork of police barricades, press vans, and costumed freaks, amassed outside 100 Centre Street like it was the scene of some paranormal calamity. Helicopters hovered like at any moment a giant squid might burst from the court’s art deco pyramid. Though more often synonymous with drunk tankers and street urchins, that day this building was the center of international intrigue. It was the pinnacle of justice itself – either its fearless proliferation, or its shameless corruption, depending on who you asked.

When the crowd reached its peak, the criminal court building opened its doors and the journalists were shepherded inside the building’s ornate green lobby, past an X-ray machine and a metal detector, up to the fifteenth floor, through another metal detector and a bag search, down the corridor past the jet black Secret Service dog named Zander, was the courtroom where Donald J Trump was to be arraigned on New York State felony crimes. Directly across the hall was on overflow room for journalists to watch it on an LCD screen, very large, yet too small.

Inside that room you could hear a pin drop, except for the chopping of police helicopter rotors above – an all-day sound that permeated even these sacred wood-paneled walls and its green marble baseboards. Then at 2:30 PM, the man of the hour entered the screen. Though Trump’s pixelated image was small, it captivated the overflow room as if it actually was that giant squid. He sat with two lawyers on either side – three men, and one woman – very upright in his red tie, with presence perhaps timid, otherwise unremarkable.

Trump was charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. That is, according to the law: when somebody makes a false entry or destroys true entries from a business record – which is a misdemeanor – with the intent to commit or conceal future crimes – upgrading the misdemeanor to a felony.

The substance of the prosecution’s allegations was mostly as rumored in the press before the indictment’s official unsealing – that is, in their words in court: that Trump’s then-lawyer made “covert payments” which Trump reimbursed with “disguised monthly payments” – the misdemeanor – this fraud being done with “intent to commit another crime” – the felony upgrade – that being to “identify and suppress information” in an “illegal conspiracy to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election.”

In the 50 minutes of court session, Trump uttered just ten words – “Not guilty” – “Yes” – “OK, thank you” – “Yes” – “I do” – “Yes” – his voice becoming more hoarse with each terse response.

Though the hearing was largely procedural, it had its clever moments enough to put a smirk on anyone’s face who can put aside their petty partisan preferences for or against Trump.

There was tit-for-tat bickering: the prosecution was not amused by Trump’s “irresponsible social media posts” and blamed Trump for “threatening the city” itself, causing the expensive security spectacle that unfolded. (Realistically, the security show would have happened regardless of any rude tweets.) The defense shot back that Trump had “free speech rights” and was rightfully frustrated by the “grave injustice happening” to him, in the form of “patently unfair” prosecutorial leaks to the press about all manner of details of the case before the defense even received the unsealed indictment.

The judge was not entirely impressed with Trump Team’s characterization of his social media posts – but nevertheless he encouraged both sides to clean up their act – that the prosecution should educate its witnesses not to blab to the media, and that Trump himself should not blab “statements that have the potential to incite violence or civil unrest.”

It was revealed that the prosecution and defense teams were negotiating an order of protection designed to limit Trump’s personal access to discovery materials, in an effort to avoid inflamatory social media posts. The sought order would hold Trump in contempt of court if he were to use the discovery materials – pre-trial evidence – for any purpose except legal defense. Trump may be limited from personally reviewing the materials except when at his lawyers’ office, and may be prohibited from posting the materials on social media or leaking them to the press. The judge stated that he would neither issue, nor consider if requested, a gag order in the case at this time.

There was he-said-she-said gossip: the prosecution raised the concern that one of Trump’s lawyers, Joseph Tacopina, might have a conflict of interest. It was alleged that Stormy Daniels – the porn star at the epicenter of Trump’s legal jeopardy – had privileged communication with Tacopina prior to his representing Trump. Tacopina denied this, insisting that he has never met nor ever spoken with Daniels, and actually he declined to represent her as a client entirely, despite Daniels’s efforts to hire him. He also lamented that, anyway she had waived any claim to attorney privilege on the account that she published a book on the whole affair.

At one point the defense implied that they may seek a dismissal of the charges. The prosecution stated that they wanted a trial date for January of 2024, which the defense countered by suggesting the spring. The prosecution stated that discovery would be complete mostly within 65 days. The judge slated the next hearing for December 4.

In a final bit of irony, the defense suggested that perhaps Trump could be personally excused from attending future court dates, on the account of the security expense to the city involved with Trump’s physical presence. Both the prosecution and the judge were unpersuaded by the notion, which Trump’s lawyer was quick to point out, was just a hypothetical question and not a formal request.

Then as quickly as it began, court was adjourned – there was no audible crack of the gavel – and Trump and his attorneys rose and exited up the aisle, back into the hallway where Zander the dog was.

By the time the overflow emptied back to the street, the protesters from earlier in the day had already began to disperse. An NYPD administrator said that there had been no arrests that day by the time court was adjourned. Though he declined to offer an estimate of the crowd’s size, this reporter estimated it to be one thousand or less at its height – perhaps three parts journalist, two parts Trump supporter, and one part Trump detractor.

In the lead-up to the court hearing, the NYPD had attempted to divide the pro- and the anti- Trump from each other with separate barricaded pens bisecting Collect Pond Park. Though some anti-Trump protesters decided to visit the pro-Trump pen, there were no real tense moments of disagreement suggesting a potential for violence.

Though New York City is known for being principally an anti-Trump town, the Trump supporters outnumbered the Trump detractors significantly. Their ranks represented most racial categories: white, black, Hispanic, Asian, and middle eastern. The anti-Trump rally-goers, though smaller in numbers, also represented a diverse racial makeup.

On the pro-Trump side, the protesters said that the indictment represented a perversion of justice – that Trump’s prosecution was strictly politically motivated. On the anti-Trump side, the protesters said that the prosecution was necessary – that no man, not even a president, is above the law.

A final resolution on this matter may not be decided in the courts for perhaps a year, or years.

It was a foggy Monday morning like any other in Khmelnytskyi – until there was the sound like a fully-loaded 16-wheel truck crashing 100 miles per hour into a steel reinforced concrete wall. Then it happened again, but louder. Quickly to my laptop, the news was saying the capital – 170 miles east of here – was already under missile attack. Then the headlines stopped coming in, as another missile struck Khmelnytskyi, knocking out the electricity instantly. A new phase of the war had just begun. Missiles struck every major city in the nation that day, killing at least 23 people, and tipping off a nation-wide spiral of blackouts that persists to this day.

October 10 is a date whose infamy is only surpassed by the first day of the war itself. At no time since the first week of the war had there been nation-wide missile strikes at that scale. Of course, the war raged violently in the east and the south all summer. Yet the central and western parts of the nation were blessed with relative peace. Many in Kyiv described it as “almost back to normal” – the city where early in the war Russian invaders were repelled from a Stalingrad-style encirclement attempt. But the autumn missile campaigns evaporated any pretense of that summertime optimism, when Kyiv again found itself the center of tragedy.

As winter ebbs, and rumors flow – as the nation braces itself for what new assault the spring awaits – let us reflect on this strange and barbaric year of war. Not just a single year of lost time, but a retrogression threatening 31 years of post-Soviet development. A war for the very identity of a people, yet with no end in sight …

- -

Just days before that strike, the entire nation erupted in celebration at the mysterious bombing of the Kerch Strait Bridge, which connects occupied Crimea to mainland Russia. The bridge is one of Russia’s most potent symbols of dominion over Ukraine. It is an engineering feat which Nazis and Soviets both tried and failed to achieve, before Putin’s Russia finally pulled it off in 2018. At a cost of a quarter trillion rubles, it became the longest bridge in Europe, just four years after Russia annexed Crimea. But besides its patriotic significance, it was Russia’s most important military supply line to Ukraine’s occupied south. When the spectacular footage of its partial destruction emerged early Saturday morning – one day after Putin’s birthday – it was in the back of every mind what Russia might do next.

By that Monday’s mass attack, Ukraine had its answer. By Tuesday, with Khmelnytskyi still without electricity, the jubilee became a dirge. Masses of people gravitated to the city center in search of power. ATM machines were out of order. Information was scarce. The only place with electricity was a small shopping mall that had a backup diesel generator. People scoured the mall for power outlets like bees on honey. Lines formed down the street for the only two coffee kiosks open and serving. It felt like the first day of war all over again.

In just that one day of attack, the local press reported that an entire third of the country’s electric infrastructure was “damaged.” As a rule of thumb, that would mean the real number was actually higher. But regardless of how it’s quantified, the destruction was easy to measure by the new regime of daily rolling blackouts. To compensate for the floundering electric grid, power schedules became the norm. Power would be distributed to different districts at different times per day. In practice, the published schedules were hardly relevant, with most places receiving less than 12 hours of light on a good day – as few as four hours on a bad one.

From that moment, daily life took on strange dimensions. Life under martial law in Kyiv teetered on a spectrum form weird to fatal. The energy challenges meant that the work-from-home era was finished. Cafés and restaurants with Wi-Fi became the de facto offices of wartime. “How to work when there is no electricity?” asked Taras, a 32-year-old software developer, “people flocked to coffee places to do their work – all tables occupied by people with laptops, all people are sleepy.”

Then there was the multiple-times daily slow and haunting wail of the air alarms. They can happen at any time, even in the middle of the night, and last anywhere from ten minutes to hours.

“Air alarms make you feel worry all the time, especially when it’s five times per day,” said Dana, 30. But most Ukrainians carry out their days unfazed – perhaps uttering suka blyat. “The nature of air alarms changes very quickly, you get used to it and just think, ‘again, these fucking Russian missiles.’”

“Frankly, not all shelters are safe enough. I’ve been to the shelter only once,” said Taras. “When I hear an air alarm and in case I feel anxiety, I just sit at my piano and play the Ukrainian national anthem.”

Though most air alarms don’t materialize into actual air attacks, they always bring chaos. Most stores will close for business during an air alarm. One afternoon in the popular Globus mall food court, a loudspeaker suddenly announced that the mall was closed. Security guards whisked away diners – amid the flutter of bodies, half eaten lunches and unfinished cappuccinos were left behind on every table.

The very next Monday, October 17, the sun had not yet risen when the air raid sirens blared at 6:30 in the morning. A common phenomenon. But this air alarm was different – within five minutes the bomb blasts shook you out of bed. From my hotel room window, I saw the black plume of smoke rising from where a “kamikaze drone” had just destroyed a residential building – killing five people, including a six-months pregnant mother-to-be, her husband, and their cat. As I ran about the hotel room collecting a bag, that unworldly sound of obliterating stone became more defined with each new hit.

“I felt how the building was shaking, I ran immediately in my pajamas with laptop to the shelter,” said Dana, an employee of the bank. “I was on the fourteenth floor, and the elevator was not working, so while I was running down the stairs, I heard more explosions. My body started to tense up – I didn’t want to die there.”

The pile of stone was still on fire, six hours after the collapse of the hundred-year-old four-story apartment building that killed the pregnant woman. With smoke rising from beneath the rubble, a crew of heroic fire fighters climbed over the wreck like a column of ants on a monolith. They dug in the smoldering debris with their hands, a crane, and a cherry picker. By miracle, 19 people were pulled from the remains alive. The street was littered all over with pulverized brick and broken glass. Across the road was the hulk of a deserted office tower, used before the war by the German consulate, now with most of its façade peeled off like flesh from a skull.

“I remember exactly that moment,” said Dana, “it was beautiful outside, it was sunny and the sky was so blue – and you’re watching the totally destroyed building in that very same time. It was like an evil came to your land.” As she recalled the event, her head began to hurt. “She was pregnant with baby. She had the chance to live a happy life with child, have a family, but because of these terrible Russian missiles …” She struggled to complete her sentence.

It was the first time the Iranian-made Shahed drones were unleashed upon Kyiv. The air defenses were completely unprepared. As drones approached their targets, police officers on the ground frantically fired their Kalashnikovs in the air in a futile attempt to avert disaster. Drones and missiles also hit infrastructural targets all over the nation that day, compounding the energy crisis such that the official linguistics changed from one third “damaged” to “destroyed.” With the temperatures dropping and the sun setting earlier each day, the novel inconveniences of October would soon become the existential extremes of November.

“Each morning we had an air alarm, my first reaction was, ‘I need to wake up quickly and have a shower as soon as possible,’” said Taras, “because in case they’ll hit critical infrastructure, I’ll have no water again.”

When a power grid fails, it’s not simply electricity that disappears. With each new blow, there are tack-on effects. For instance, unlike the Romans who built a water distribution grid powered by gravity, most modern nations’ water supplies depend on electric pumps. (Including the United States.) When there is an unplanned power outage – such as one caused by a missile physically destroying the local transformer stations – that usually means there is no running water either. (That means you can’t flush your toilet.) Centralized heating, which is common in Ukraine, fails. The communication networks collapse, as cell towers and internet switches go offline, lowering capacity while increasing demand. Modern life is a house of cards waiting to blow away.

The effect, said Natalia, a 53-year-old accountant, was like “our civilization rolling back in time. Ukraine was in the stone age.” She said, “life stops and seems to freeze. Everything shrinks and becomes more narrow.”

By mid-November it already started to snow – every day. When it is below freezing outside; when there is no electricity, no heat, no water; when your hot water tank won’t start; when you’re sitting in candle light under layers of blankets, under your uninsulated roof, waiting for the sun to rise for your next joule of heat – it’s a type of existence long forgotten by developed civilizations. It is a condition for which there is no nostalgia.

In Khmelnytskyi, Natalia’s hot water tank needed to be repaired five times in the month of December – first it’s circuits fried, then its pumps broke, then it filled with sludge – multiple times. With the water supply stagnating under reduced pressure, sediment came up through the faucets. With the sewage system under-powered to evacuate discharge … we hoped it was just sediment turning the water brown.

“It was sub-zero temperature outside,” said Natalia, “I was under three layers of blankets, wearing a hat indoors … I know many people who have burnt out refrigerators, televisions, microwaves, due to the voltage surges.”

The breakdown of information streams also posed an anachronism. People with families living in the villages often had no way of contacting them after a missile strike. People in the villages had no way of knowing even what was happening with the war. “My parents in Irpin, they used to have several days in a row without electricity,” said Taras. “You have no internet and even no way to call your close ones. I remember days when I was able to reach out to my parents and they were asking me questions, like ‘what’s happening in the news?’”

Earlier in the war, Irpin was the site of a devastating one-month battle. Just north of Kyiv, it was awarded “Hero City of Ukraine” for the price it paid halting the Russian army at the capital’s gate. It’s critical infrastructure was a shambles even months before the mass missile attacks began. Further north, past the city of Bucha, practically no building in the town of Borodyanka even had windows any more.

It was some of the darkest days, of the war, and our lives. But the human spirit in Ukraine was indomitable. Ukraine had not yet perished.

Stay tuned for Part Two, coming next week

Photos: Maidan Nezalezhnosti - “Independence Square” - at dawn; Heroes searching for survivors of the Oct. 17 drone strike in Kyiv; The heavily damaged office tower once serving the German consulate; “Car Graveyard of Irpin”; A destroyed apartment block in Borodyanka. All photographs by John Bolger

KYIV, UKRAINE - Life carries on in the capital of Ukraine. Though American alarm has only materialized last year, Ukraine has actually been at war since 2014. In the heart of the city, the Alley of Heavenly Hundred Heroes commemorates the souls who perished during that fateful revolution whose outcome reverberates to this day. Those 113 who died then would never know the troubles to come. Fourteen thousand more Ukrainian lives have been lost since, between the devastating war with Russia that cost Ukraine the Crimea, and the civil war with Russian-sponsored separatists that sees two of Ukraine’s regional capitals occupied this very day. Now the Russian military surrounds the nation on four fronts and no one living knows what will happen next, nor how many more will die.

In the five months I have been reporting in Ukraine, I have encountered as many theories as I have Ukrainians. Many don't think Russia will invade at all – it's just games played by Biden and Putin. Some believe it is inevitable, and that it's Putin's will. Some think it will be Biden's fault if it happens. These two camps get into heated arguments all the time. Some Ukrainians take their cues from the daily news. Others from astrology. But war has been a fact of life here for eight years – some say one thousand years – and no Ukrainian panics about it. Not in public at least.

The malls are still full of shoppers. Though prices are on the rise due to inflation and currency devaluation. The clubs are still packed with dancers till past dawn every weekend. Guns and ammunition are flying off the shelves, one store clerk says. Walkie talkies are too, though the clerk warns they will be useless against Russian military radio jammers during invasion. Shooting ranges have been booked solid, with civilians eager for any practical firearms experience they can get.

One of the national banks sent its employees detailed instruction on how to handle terrorist situations at the office. The mayor told citizens that the subway tunnels were prepared for emergency refuge in case of Russian shelling – it is the deepest subway in the world and doubles as nuclear shelter. The city also published a list of essential items all citizens should have packed to go in case of war. The list includes vodka. It is life as usual.

Though evidence of the war is scant in Kyiv – there is a captured Russian tank on display at the national World War Two monument – it is much easier to find the scars of war in the liberated areas which already suffered occupation early.

Mariupol

This maritime industrial city is just 10 kilometers from the occupation line, and 40 from Russia itself. It is of strategic importance because of its access to the Sea of Azov – there are Ukrainian naval stations there – and for the expansive industrial complexes that operate here. It is a continental hub for steel manufacture. It is the only major city once occupied by the separatists now liberated by the Ukrainian army.

Though it has been seven years since liberation, the destroyed husk of the city's police headquarters can still be found not far from the city center. During the occupation, the important municipal buildings were seized by the separatists. This building was destroyed in the fighting that ensued for control of the city. It's charred remains are riddled with bullet holes and fenced off by corrugated steal. The police now operate next door. The intersection is a famous haunt for wild dogs.

The city has been blessed with peace since the last major attack in January of 2015 – one fateful night when separatists launched some hundred rockets into the residential quarters, killing 31 civilians – including women and children – and destroying several buildings. Now there is calm. Residents enjoy a good sunset at the pier feeding geese, and leisurely walks on the seaside train tracks. Children try to climb into the abandoned soviet-era train cars awaiting scrap, and others just drink beer. Some get too drunk and make a scene in the waterfront Georgian restaurant, while an older couple slow dances to the vibrato of the lounge singer's anthem. Life too in Mariupol is as usual as can be.

Lebedynske

The same can not be said of this ghost village which exists in a de facto state of military occupation by the Ukrainian army. Access to Lebedynske is tightly controlled by the Ukrainian military. The highway that connects this village to Mariupol is littered with hedgehogs and jersey barriers, two fortified military checkpoints with heavy weapons, and signs warning of mine hazards in the fields on either side. The soldiers forbid any photography of the blockades.

“I wish you wisdom,” said one checkpoint soldier, in Russian, as our car was cleared for entry. “Because if there is no wisdom, the punishment will follow you, even in the States.”

All that separates this village from the frontline is a vast field. The treeline you can see from Lebedynske's eastern edge represents the war itself. The front is just 5 kilometers away. Ever since the village was shelled and occupied in 2014 – liberated in 2015 – about 70 percent of the population has left and not returned. The village is silent except for the constant howling of wild dogs and the twinkling of snow blowing in the wind. A babushka walks repeatedly up and down the main avenue of the village, where a government building has been destroyed by bombs and the elementary school next door is closed indefinitely. She doesn't want to speak to the press. None of the scant few villagers who stayed behind do.

One of the larger houses has been commandeered by the army as an observation post. It is the only lively place in the otherwise deserted village. Violence can erupt at any time. The last flareup at Lebedynske happened just last month, when the separatists opened fire with small arms. It is a near daily occurrence along the eastern frontier. In just the past week there were at least 23 ceasefire violations by the separatists and four casualties suffered by the Ukrainian Defense Forces.

As the world waits for what happens next, only one man knows for sure what that is. With the Black Sea to the south blockaded this week by the Russian navy, simultaneous with the deployment of Russian tanks to the north in Belarus, the feeling is worse than it ever has been. But the biggest sign of panic in the nation so far comes from the United States Embassy, which on Friday gave its most stern warning to date yet.

In an email to American citizens in Ukraine, the State Department said, "those in Ukraine should depart now via commercial or private means. US citizens in Ukraine should be aware that the US government will not be able to evacuate US citizens in the event of Russian military action anywhere in Ukraine. Military action may commence at any time and without warning."

As of Saturday, the embassies of many European nations have followed suit, shutting down operations and instructing their citizens to leave Ukraine immediately.

Photography by John Bolger

“The potentially illegal and arguably unconstitutional practices the NYPD engages in during it's domestic surveillance has reportedly damaged the NYPD's cooperation with the FBI, and arguably undermines the program's effectiveness and opens it up to significant civil and human rights litigation in federal and state courts.”

This might sound like the futile ramblings of an NYPD reform activist. But actually, these words were signed by Mayor Eric Adams – a former NYPD captain – who was sworn into the city’s top executive office this month.

Another letter from Adams discusses “the serious allegations and evidence of wrongdoing charged against the Division, which is the basis of three federal lawsuits concerning the Intelligence Division's unconstitutional targeting of civil rights groups, leftist organizations, and religious groups,” as he pleaded with the city comptroller to reveal a secret agreement that was made to shield the NYPD Intelligence Division from the comptroller’s oversight functions.

Though the letters were written nearly nine years ago – when Adams was just a state senator from Brooklyn urging a “full fiscal, management and operations audit” of one of the NYPD’s most constitutionally dubious units – the words are as true today as they were then.

But now the author of those letters is the new mayor, and he finally has the power to impose the Intelligence Division audit which he was helpless to demand when he believed the words he authored years ago.

The NYPD Intelligence Division has never been audited since its powers were greatly expanded after the 9/11 attacks. It conducts domestic and foreign intelligence collection, political surveillance, and threat analysis. It embeds plainclothes officers at political protests, and deploys – probably illegally – in multiple states in the Union and in over two dozen foreign nations. It receives hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding and even unknown amounts of private funding – unaccountable – from the NYPD’s own New York City Police Foundation.

And though it hasn’t been audited, it never will be audited under the current patchwork of city policies and secret agreements that nobody in public knows the terms of.

“It is our understanding that on or around 2002 or thereafter an agreement was made between the New York City comptroller and the NYPD concerning potential audits of the finances and activities of the Intelligence Division,” one of the Adams letters reads.

In response to his request for the audit, “we were informed by your office of this agreement,” the letter reads. But the comptroller’s office, then headed by Comptroller John Liu, refused to disclose what that agreement was. “We are troubled by the impression conveyed to us by your office that an agreement between the city comptroller and the Police Department might exist which your office believes can be denied to the legislature.”

Despite the supposed existence of the agreement, when Liu ran for re-election to the comptroller’s seat, one of his campaign promises was to finally audit the Intelligence Division. His competitor, Scott Stringer, made the same promise. When Stringer won the office, he served two terms without ever performing the audit. A new comptroller now holds the office, Brad Lander, who was sworn in the same day Mayor Adams was.

Over the course of years, Stringer’s administration refused to comment on the supposed agreement repeatedly, over the phone, by email, and even in person. When asked about the audit personally, Stringer became uncomfortable and remarked that he was just re-elected. Multiple Freedom of Information Law requests to his office over years were denied, and never produced the agreement.

“We are in the process of planning how best to use our audit power to make change in city agencies, and certainly will be taking a close look at the NYPD,” said a representative of Comptroller Lander this month in response to an email inquiry about the potential audit and the secret agreement concerning it.

Mayor Adams’s office did not respond to an email inquiry by the time of publish.

A New Era in Political Surveillance, Maybe?

Though Stringer failed to keep his campaign promise during the eight years he served as comptroller, he does have the laudable distinction of being the only city executive to attempt any meaningful NYPD reform in the wake of the nation-wide civil unrest the summer of 2020.

“I am writing today to notify your offices of my intent to terminate the procurement and contracting processes that have long been utilized by the NYPD to purchase what it deems to be ‘classified, confidential special expense’ goods and services,” Stringer wrote in a letter to then-NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea in July of 2020. “I believe it is time to end the memorandum of understanding that was signed under previous mayoral and comptroller administrations and, since 2007, has allowed the NYPD to bypass certain procurement processes and oversight measures when it comes to purchasing surveillance and other equipment.”

While the supposed 2002 secret agreement shielding NYPD espionage from audit likely survives, the 2007 special expense, or “SPEX,” agreement is revealed and terminated as of August 27, 2020.

“This agreement allows the NYPD to hide from that public transparency accountability system that's in place for everyone else,” said Jerome Greco, an attorney for the Legal Aid Society, “and they've essentially been hiding hundreds of millions of dollars in purchases of surveillance technology.” The Legal Aid Society was the first to publish the SPEX agreements, and is currently in litigation with the NYPD for more documentation of their spy expenses.

Though the comptroller’s office has rescinded its endorsement for the NYPD to circumvent typical oversight for its intelligence contracts, it is not clear exactly what if any actual effect it will have on NYPD secrecy. In a designation letter which predates the SPEX agreement by two months, the city’s Law Department granted the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for legal matters the role of “special assistant corporation counsel,” with the power to act as the city’s top lawyer “with respect to approving as to form and certifying as to legal authority Police Department procurement contracts for confidential items and goods required for covert NYPD operations." Essentially, the NYPD is empowered to self-certify any spy contract it wants at its sole discretion – at least according to the legal theory of then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“Now that the comptroller has withdrawn their agreement,” said Greco, “it's not clear whether or not if they're going to be holding on to unredacted copies, or if the NYPD is going to cut them out of the process … and how much it will mean that the future contracts will be more transparent, or if they will just try to sidestep the comptroller’s office altogether.”

The SPEX agreements reveal a culture of secrecy within the NYPD that Adams himself admitted in his letters has no basis in law. “Congress has granted the executive and certain federal agencies the ability to classify documents,” he wrote, “No such authority exists at the state level.” And yet the SPEX agreement is labeled “privileged and confidential.” A 2010 amendment to the agreement is stamped CONFIDENTIAL. It outlines byzantine requirements, among them that the comptroller’s office not even be permitted to retain copies of the secret NYPD contracts except in redacted form and outside of computer systems and city databases. It includes a waiver from the city’s Department of Small Business Services exempting SPEX purchases from the typical requirements designed to encourage contracting with local small businesses.

Does Political Surveillance Even Work?

Incidentally, the events that led to Stringer’s change of heart on NYPD covert operations may also be the events which prove just how useless the NYPD Intelligence Division’s political surveillance actually has been all these years. The riots in New York City in the summer of 2020 – the largest and most destructive events of their kind in the city since the 1977 blackout – represent not only a tactical failure, but a monumental intelligence failure, one for which the Intelligence Division may never be assessed.

Having fixated on political actors – spying on Black Lives Matter activists for years – the NYPD missed the actual threat: traditional crime – the very thing that municipal police departments are designed to fight. The NYPD itself concluded that the perpetrators of the riots – which spanned multiple nights, in two boroughs, the burglary of over 600 stores, unknown monetary damage in the tens of millions of dollars, and an unknown number of civilian injuries or fatalities – were not political activists but “non-ideological opportunists,” according to a report by the city’s Department of Investigation, DOI.

The DOI report reveals that of the NYPD’s various internal metrics on the 2020 unrest, that the Intelligence Division’s data is the least accurate, undercounting arrests by nearly a factor of three compared to other internal NYPD sources. That is despite the fact that the Intelligence Division supposedly monitored the entire events closely and maintained daily intelligence binders.

But without an actual audit – and without even the possibility to audit – the DOI report may be the closest government examination of the Intelligence Division the public ever gets. Yet the DOI did not have the requisite access, nor mandate – the scope of their investigation was NYPD brutality of protesters, not the riots themselves, nor the failures that led to the riots.

In response to Freedom of Information Law requests, DOI said they did not possess any of the Intelligence Division’s supposed “Handschu investigative statements” – legally required paperwork for any NYPD political investigation – and neither did they possess any interview transcripts of NYPD’s deputy commissioner of intelligence, John Miller – implying no interviews with him were conducted at all – despite Miller telling the press that the mass looting was “an intelligence failure.” They did interview three-star Chief of Intelligence Thomas Galati, but declined to provide the transcripts.

Documents:

• Eric Adams NYPD Intelligence Division Audit Letters to NYC Comptroller

• Protocol for Processing Special Expense Purchases for the NYPD

• Termination of NYPD’s Special Expense Procurement and Contracting Process

Photo: From left to right, David Cohen: founding NYPD deputy commissioner for intelligence, and former CIA deputy director for operations; Thomas Galati: NYPD chief of intelligence; John Miller: NYPD deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, and NYPD deputy commissioner for public information. Illustration by John Bolger. Fair use imagery from: NYPD, Associated Press, and Harvard Law Today.

Bronx store owners who were looted still remember the Summer of 2020 riots, even as Mayor Bill de Blasio ekes out his way from office. And freshly obtained city data sheds new light on the extent to which those small businesses bore the hidden cost for Bill de Blasio’s disastrous handling of the riots.

The data documents damage reported by small businesses to the Department of Small Business Services, and documents emergency grants awarded to compensate qualifying looting victims – grants which fell much short of the actual damage inflicted by the riots.

According to the data, 141 small businesses reported over $12 million in combined damages – with $9.4 million in the Bronx alone. But the SBS grants were over 13 times less than that, with Bronx small businesses sustaining $125 thousand damage on average each. Individual grant awards were capped at $10 thousand per store.

In a a one-and-a-half mile survey of 34 looted stores from the data – representing $6.4 million in reported loss in the Bronx – businesses were not amused, and did not have fond memories of the mayor. Many expressed regret, bitterness, distrust, and relief at the mayor’s leaving. Six of the stores appeared out of business.

“That was one of the bad things that I will never forget,” one store owner said of de Blasio’s riots. “We seen police in front of our stores but they couldn't do nothing … they couldn't do anything about it in front of them on the streets.”

His store reported $1 million in damages. Other stores had similar memories that the NYPD did nothing to protect their businesses during the mass looting. Many stores blamed the mayor for what happened.

“We pay a lot of taxes, and the city do not have nothing for us,” said another store owner, “the city was not helpful at all, the city was failed to protect our rights, the city was totally failed.” His store reported $130,000 in damage. He said he believed the reason why was politics.

“He put everyone’s lives in danger,” said another store owner, “we were out here until 2 AM defending our store.” He described Bill de Blasio as “a complete failure,” and he thanked god he was leaving office.

Considering that, according to NYPD crime data, there were 618 reported burglaries between Manhattan and the Bronx at the peak of the riots, the SBS data provides that nearly one in four looted stores were small businesses, at least. Bronx small businesses bore the brunt of that damage, with 75 businesses making up more than half of the grants, but representing over three quarters of the reported damages. Correlated with the NYPD data, the SBS data reveals that at least 40% of the looted stores in the Bronx were small businesses, as were nearly one in seven of the looted businesses in Manhattan, at least, which received 57 awarded grants.

Though the data provides a rare measure of the cost borne to small businesses by the 2020 riots, it is not complete, and represents an undercount of the total damage to small businesses. It only documents small businesses making less than $1.5 million in annual revenue, and only businesses which applied for and were approved of the grants. It contains no data on large and corporate businesses. On the survey route – East Kingsbridge, Grand Concourse, and Burnside – looted small businesses not represented in the data were encountered.

“If we're not qualified, then who's qualified?,” said a manager at an independent pharmacy whose grant application was rejected. She said the city agents were “very rude.” “As if people were trying to get free money or something,” she said, “the attitude that he's like, you guys are not qualified, I don't understand why you are calling. We just ended up giving up.”

It wasn’t the first time the city snubbed her store. “We got zero help during the night of the riot,” she said, “we called 9-1-1 at least like 20, 40, 50 times. We don't even know, because nobody picked up, it was just ringing.”

“it was a very memorable, but painful experience,” she said.

The data represents a diverse variety of stores: pawn shops, jewelers, electronics shops, pharmacies, furniture stores, hardware stores, delis, restaurants, liquor stores, clothing stores, eyeglass stores, and plenty others.

Not a single looted business spoken to expressed any positive feelings about the outgoing mayor.

Responding to records requests, both the Economic Development Corporation and the Department of City Planning claimed to not possess any documentation or reporting on the riots at all.

Though, the last time similar riots broke out citywide, during the 1977 ConEdison blackout, the Department of City Planning did in fact conduct and publish a thorough analysis of that mass looting event within the month. Allegedly, the same department did not analyze the 2020 riots. To date, no analysis of the 2020 riots has ever been published by any government agency.

But the Bronx is never going to forget.

UPDATE (10/31/2021): A new document from the NYS Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Services was added, and a marked update was added to this writing.

The Documents:

• Electronic Poll Book System Vendor Assessment Report

• KNOWiNK Contract

• KNOWiNK Statement of Work

• KNOWiNK Price Quotes

• KNOWiNK Master Software License and Service Agreement

• Board of Elections and Comptroller Letters and Emails

• Comptroller’s Office Contract Registration Cover Sheet and Financial Management System Records

• Dutchess County KNOWiNK Contract

• NYS Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Services ePollbook Testing Reports

When New Yorkers head to the polls next month there will be one pressing question on everyone’s mind: why the heck am I being forced to sign an ipad to vote? The short answer is: because after the New York City Board of Elections’ embarrassing failure to administer the 2016 presidential primary ethically – over 200 thousand New Yorkers illegally disenfranchised, skewing the election results – the NYCBOE had to do something. That something was the transfer of $24 million and rising in public funds to the private actor KNOWiNK, which powers its technical infrastructure on Amazon Web Services.

Rather than just doing its job it was supposed to do in the first place, the NYCBOE decided to abdicate a core part of its electoral duty – maintenance of the poll books, and the printing of paper ballots – to the private sector. Amazon now has a privileged role in the administration of New York City elections. Verizon does too. And the underpaid staff who actually work on the frontlines of our elections will continue to be underpaid, even as the government saw fit to invest $24 million not in its own faltering organization, but in a Saint Louis tech firm.

The NYCBOE’s violations in 2016 were so egregious, that the New York State attorney general intervened in a lawsuit filed by voting rights groups against the agency – intervened by validating the complaints and even levying new allegations. According to the press release announcing the legal action, the attorney general found “new evidence that shows both explicit violations of the law and that high-level officials at NYCBOE had knowledge of these violations.” The attorney general also discovered what the NYCBOE called the “Brooklyn Project,” which illegally cancelled over 117 thousand voter registrations. At one point NYCBOE was even consulting ancestry.com to purge voters – very illegal.

A timeline of the NYCBOE’s “Brooklyn Project,” which illegally purged over 117 thousand voter registrations. From the New York State attorney general.

“The Brooklyn Project was illegal under both the National Voter Registration Act (“NVRA”), 52 U.S.C. § 20507(b)(2), and the New York Election Law, N.Y. Elec. Law § 5-400,” the press release read. “In spite of this clear prohibition, the NYCBOE proceeded with the Brooklyn Project, and for several months in 2014, more than 20 employees worked diligently to flag voters for cancellation based on the illegal criterion.”

Despite the serious accusations of systematic antidemocratic practices, the settlement was toothless, and the NYCBOE lived another day – to hand out giant piles of cash instead of fixing its problems.

The original contract signed over to KNOWiNK by the NYCBOE began in July 2019 and expired in June of this year, with the option for a two-year renewal “under substantially the same terms and conditions.” Meaning, by now the NYCBOE has consigned even more public money to this private entity.

KNOWiNK is a tech firm that licenses election software and sells ipads to governments all over the country. They often copy-paste the same contracts between clients – in at least one instance KNOWiNK refers to New York City as “the City of Philadelphia.” Blatant disrespect aside, KNOWiNK doesn’t even own its client-facing servers, instead leasing them from Amazon – the network infrastructure oligopolist which has become the de facto most powerful actor on the internet.

Timelines from the New York State attorney general documenting NYCBOE illegally purging another 104 thousand voter registrations.

Big Money, Cheap Security

Before the NYCBOE signed away its functionality to KNOWiNK, there was only one obvious single point of failure: the NYCBOE itself. Now there are many more single points of failure. Not only are elections dependent on the NYCBOE, but also on the internet, the cellular phone network, the electric grid, proprietary software, and proprietary software licensing. That’s a huge increase in the attack surface area just to avoid reforming the NYCBOE.

But is the system secure? Inherently, no internet-connected system is truly secure. But there are mitigations that can be taken to decrease that insecurity. The NYCBOE seems to have taken the bare minimum, however.

The assessment of KNOWiNK’s security was undertaken by two actors: the New York State Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, DHSES, performed a vulnerability scan on the ipads and other hardware; the private company NYS Technology Enterprise Corporation did a vulnerability scan on KNOWiNK’s public internet endpoints – the points of entry for the NYCBOE’s necessary interactions with KNOWiNK.

This might sound convincing to state bureaucrats. But the fine print in the state’s Vendor Assessment Report acknowledges that NYSTEC’s scans were “basic network and web application scans … with defaults enabled,” and that “manual application testing, penetration testing and other security testing were not in scope.” Meaning, that for the NYCBOE’s $24 million biannual budget for KNOWiNK, they could not afford to pay an actual person to actually try to break into the multi-million dollar system powering all of New York City’s elections. It just wasn’t in scope!

UPDATE 10/31/2021: Inspiring even less confidence in KNOWiNK’s security, the DHSES report on their limited security assessment states, “this report does not make any conclusive statements as to the overall security posture of the various vendor ePollbook submissions and technical solutions.” In the FOIL appeal response letter granting redacted access to this report, DHSES insists that it’s “Cyber Incident Response Team” – a division of the DHSES Office of Counter Terrorism – “consists of highly trained cyber security experts and provides security support and analysis.” And yet the DHSES’s own website has had an invalid HTTPS certificate for over a month – they have yet to fix this basic security error even after being notified about it 10 days ago.

Amazon: Captain of Everything

I must confess: it is usual for software firms to lease their infrastructure from Amazon. Amazon’s seat of power relies precisely on just how common and socially acceptable the practice has become. And perhaps this is not always a negative practice. But there are different requirements for, let’s say, operating a social network, or a news website, or an online store front – and administering elections in the largest city in America. The first category is relatively harmless – who cares if Amazon has become the global digital distribution network for all the newspapers? – but allowing Amazon to be a direct operator in the electoral process is a risk that society should not accept – no matter how small you think that risk is, and no matter how many Amazon marketers have convinced the professional classes that their oligopoly is great and fair.

Actually, Amazon shouldn’t have any role in elections at all – not even to source the blank paper the ballots are printed on. This should be as obvious as it is why the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts weren’t allowed to conduct public elections in the era when the working classes still had the sense to call them “robber barons.”

I am not making an innuendo here that Amazon is corrupt and would interfere with our democracy – actually this is pretty well documented, since they spent $18.6 million on lobbyists last year – but merely stating that the electoral process can not afford any vulnerability of any kind, and not one so avoidable as giving Amazon the keys to the castle.

Unlike American banks, the tech oligopoly is not “too big to fail.” Earlier this month Facebook suffered an embarrassing total global infrastructural outage causing their organization to be completely offline for a quarter day. That was great. But what if Amazon goes down on election day? Even if Amazon doesn’t go down, the mere presence of its brand is not a guarantee of security or availability. Actually, the safe operation of its infrastructure rentals is entirely up to the competency of its renters – which is a huge if. Amazon Web Services is so complicated to maneuver that its customers routinely leave themselves completely unsecured. Not only does AWS give you the power to deploy complex networks, it gives you the power to do so very very poorly.

This is not a theoretical problem. Last year, while investigating this story, I found by accident a big name government contractor leaking an entire terabyte of their government clients’ documents – small towns, counties, and cities from all over the country. Do those governments even have a clue? Was there any business consequence for the contractor?

Declining Faith in Elections as a Function of Government

Election integrity is more important for democracy than even elections themselves. As a matter of fact, even North Korea has elections. The mere existence of an electoral bureaucracy is not proof of an effective democracy. Actually credible elections are the bedrock of a true democratic republic.

And yet, the rejection of election integrity has become a bipartisan political tactic for at least twenty years in this country. In 2000 George Walker Bush was said to have stolen the state of Florida. In 2004 it was said again that Bush’s victory was rigged, with 32 Democratic Party members of Congress voting to decertify the election results of Ohio. In 2008 Barrack Hussein Obama II was outrageously and absurdly accused of not even being a United States citizen, and therefore ineligible to run for office. In 2016 when Donald John Trump pulled off the surprise electoral victory of a century, it was said that he was actually an agent of Russian intelligence, and that Владимир Владимирович Путин himself had brainwashed an entire population to elect his puppet. In 2020 when Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. defeated Trump, the infamous slogan “Stop The Steal” was coined, and a few thousand of his supporters stormed the United States Capital.

Whether or not you believe any of these conspiracy theories about how every president in the past twenty years won by fraud is beside the point. The point is, that it is unhealthy for a democracy when the integrity of its elections is in question – rightly or not – and bad things happen when there are electoral doubts. Why should our elections be beholden to public faith in Amazon when the last election outcome – disputed on the flimsiest evidentiary grounds – caused riots that made the federal government very embarrassed and left multiple people dead? If Amazon becomes a regular fixture in American elections, what is going to happen when the next Trump disputes their electoral defeat on the grounds of Amazon’s corruption? What if that charge isn’t even false?

Let’s not even go there. Let’s just secure the elections and stop dogpiling public money onto private actors that do nothing but raise electoral doubts. If there is an electoral bureaucracy that is failing then it should be reformed – or dismantled and replaced. KNOWiNK’s business dealings with the NYCBOE shouldn’t inspire any confidence that the government is actually doing its job now. Money isn’t the solution when the problem is bureaucratic rot.

John Bolger is a software developer and systems administrator.

This is a cross-post with DocuDrop NYC, a sister publication to S’Now’Den.

Illustration by John Bolger. Fair use imagery from: Blue Origin, Amazon Web Services, KNOWiNK, Federal Reserve Bank, and New York City Board of Elections. Note: only 0.4 percent of actual money wasted is shown.

The first installment of NYPD Docs Clearinghouse Week has come to a close, but the memories will endure. There was fresh docs, biting analysis, and even political cartoons. The stories have been moved to DocuDrop NYC, a sister publication focusing on raw analysis of fresh government docs.

There were so many internal NYPD documents left over from The Intercept investigation into last summer’s unrest that they had to be released by DocuDrop NYC over the course of five days. (Days three and four were the best ones.)

Here’s the NYPD Docs Clearinghouse Week lineup:

Day One: NYPD Pepper Spray Tactical Bulletin
After last summer's unrest, NYPD's Training Bureau issues a refresher on the proper use of OC spray

Day Two: NYPD Use of Force Reporting Guide
When officers use force, they must report it in the NYPD's "Finest Online Records Management System" where police violence is tracked

Day Three: NYPD Coronavirus and Protest Finest Messages
Internal mass messages provide a time capsule look at the early pandemic, and document that maskless officers at protests violated department policy

Day Four: NYPD Internal Protest Arrest Data
A look at two competing data sources within NYPD show wild discrepancies which shroud more mystery on last summer's unrest than it uncovers

Day Five: NYPD Legal Bulletin Right to Record Police
How to exercise your First Amendment right to film the police, or, How the police can abridge your First Amendment right to film them

Bonus Day: NYPD Academy Quizzes
How well can you do on these NYPD Academy exams?

Illustrations by John Bolger. Fair use imagery from the American Broadcasting Company, Warner Brothers; The Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation, NYPD, Microsoft.

When Jean Kim, a registered lobbyist for real estate clients, announced that mayoral hopeful Scott Stringer had sexually harassed her 20 years ago, the reaction in progressive circles was swift. The next day, the Working Families Party, the Sunrise Movement, and other progressive organizations and politicians recoiled from Stringer, not only rescinding their endorsements but voicing visceral disgust.

But Stringer denied the allegation. Reports came out the following week casting doubt on Kim. Though the accusation is practically impossible to prove or disprove, it was granted as true by many progressives solely on the basis of Kim’s press conference. No time was afforded to assess the accusation’s merit before flipping on Stringer. In doing so, the most viable progressive candidate’s campaign was put in jeopardy. Nonetheless, many progressives switched their endorsement to Maya Wiley or Dianne Morales – candidates with much less practical political experience and polling much lower than Stringer.

Now, Dianne Morales has a scandal all her own. THE CITY reported on Sunday night that Morales bribed a Department of Environmental Protection inspector in 2004, paying $300 to make a $12,500 water bill disappear. The report is documented by city investigators. Morales lied to the investigators repeatedly during the investigation. They concluded that Morales should be terminated from her then position at the Department of Education, and that her bribing should be considered in any pre-employment screening should she ever seek another DOE job. The crooked water inspector was prosecuted.

But the movement away from Morales has not been swift. Actually, it seems no one is shying away from her at all. The Working Families Party website continues to endorse Morales, though the party did not respond to multiple requests for comment rationalizing the bribery affair. The Sunrise Movement, an organization specializing in climate issues, did not respond to multiple requests for comment squaring their endorsement against Morales’s bribery of environmental regulators. Jimmy Van Bramer, a progressive city councilman in Queens and candidate for Queens borough president, did not respond to multiple requests for comment about his endorsement of Morales amid the new revelations. Each had previously endorsed, and then un-endorsed, Stringer for mayor.

Despite the proven bribery – which she does not deny – Morales depicted herself as a victim. In a statement released by her campaign, she acknowledged that she consulted with a real estate attorney before reaching out to the DEP. Her statement claims that her bribe paying was the product of her ignorance. “It would never have occurred to me that I could challenge this man and the bureaucratic systems he purported to represent. I didn’t feel like I had a choice,” the statement read. But the city investigators found that six out of nine other known individuals approached by the same corrupt inspector declined to pay the bribe.

The statement goes on to relate her experience to “poor people, single mothers, Black and Brown people, and immigrants,” claiming that, “the unfortunate reality is that these incidents are everyday occurrences for the city’s most vulnerable communities.” But it was not clear exactly how paying bribery was relevant to ethnicity. Her campaign did not respond to request for comment.

Despite the city investigators recommending her termination, Morales’s campaign statement claimed that she decided to leave her city job “completely independently to pursue a different opportunity.” Years later, when she was up for an opportunity in current Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, she did not land the position, THE CITY reported.

Bribery is not a victimless crime – and the victim is not the one placing the bribe. Bribery is a crime against society. Corruption is rampant in government, it impacts all aspects of civic life, disproportionately effecting the lower and middle classes, who can’t afford to buy influence or privilege. Paying bribery is a trait antithetical to the entire progressive movement. But Morales’s progressive endorsers do not seem to care, despite fleeing from their previous endorsements of Stringer, on much flimsier evidentiary grounds.

Wiley, the other remaining progressive candidate, and sharing the Working Families Party endorsement with Morales, did not accept Morales’s defense. “I was frankly shocked and surprised,” Wiley told the Daily News. “She chose to pay a bribe and lie about it. I don’t know how that makes someone a victim if these facts are true.” Her campaign did not respond to a request for comment in time for this article.

At least one progressive has expressed remorse at rescinding his endorsement for Stringer. Congressman Jamaal Bowman pulled his Stringer endorsement around the same time everybody else did. But on a Zoom meeting earlier this week with Northwest Bronx Indivisible, a grassroots political organization, he said, “quite frankly, I sometimes regret it, because I wasn't more patient and didn't ask more questions.” He said that his decision to rescind was informed by his conversations with other former endorsers of Stringer, including sexual abuse survivors. “I tried to be sensitive to that, and just be responsive to the moment,“ he said. And yet, “I believe in Stringer as a leader and as a person, and I think he would make a really good mayor.“ Bowman has not endorsed Morales for mayor.

Though Stringer’s campaign has definitely suffered a publicity hit, according to recent polling from Pix11 News and Emerson College, Stringer remains the most viable progressive candidate, virtually tied at 15 percent with Andrew Yang, the former candidate for Democratic presidential nominee turned CNN commentator. Eric Adams, the former NYPD captain, narrowly held the lead at 18 percent.

Stringer still maintains the endorsement of many labor unions, including the United Federation of Teachers, Teamsters Local 237, LIUNA-NY, Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, and others. Stringer is currently the city’s comptroller.

Illustration by John Bolger. Fair use photos from Dianne Morales for NYC Mayor, and Department of Environmental Protection.

As America hailed in its 46th commander in chief, the streets of Washington DC were laid out for tank warfare. Sprawling from the razor-wire perimeter of the National Mall, a labyrinth network of concrete barriers and metal fences transformed the once lively city into a physical obstacle course fit for a king.

There was none of the usual regalia heralding the new leader. No jubilant crowds of revelers. Not a gasp of celebration nor protest. The capital was under military occupation. None but the highest echelons of society were allowed to witness the swearing in of Joseph R Biden. For the unwashed masses, it was a simulated war zone, obstructed by Secret Service checkpoints and military patrols. It may even have been the largest war game ever held at the capital, with tens of thousands of soldiers and police officers mobilized from across the nation to repel an advancing enemy army.

But there was no enemy army.

Downtown, most businesses were closed. Most buildings were boarded up. Every intersection, every driveway, every alleyway, and every garage entrance, was blocked by jersey barriers. Some intersections were even sealed off by lines of eight-wheal Mack trucks. The infamous eight-foot "non-scalable" black mesh fences dashed across streets and around blocks for miles, demarcating the intricate boundaries of the security zones. Digital wanted posters for enemies of the state illuminated every bus stop, showing different crime scene photos from the Capital riot every 6 seconds.

It was an inauguration defined by absence, haunted by inaugurations past. Four years ago, even as violent anti-government protesters made vehicle fires and hurled bricks at police officers, the city still teemed with celebration. This time, it was an oppressive affair, violating democratic norms and betraying the American spirit.

Perhaps these are unprecedented times. That at least can rationalize why this inauguration was carried out under military diktat. But that can never justify the cost this inauguration inflicted upon our democracy. We can hope that another inauguration like this never happens again. But hope just may not be enough.

There isn’t much else to say. For posterity, photos from the event follow.

Last week was an unprecedented week in an unprecedented year for New York City. Amid the backdrop of an economy shuttered by a global pandemic – 20 thousand New Yorkers killed by disease – Manhattan experienced two nights of large-scale riots, perhaps for the first time in fifty years, as the nation dealt with widespread civil unrest at the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The riots were so disturbing to city officials that after the first night, May 31, the mayor instituted an 11 PM curfew – the first time a curfew was imposed on the city since World War Two. When the curfew failed to prevent riots the following night, the mayor extended the order for the rest of the week and earlied the curfew time to 8 PM. The most difficult week of Bill de Blasio's tenure went down in history.

But While the two nights of riots are still controversial and shrouded in mystery, as of yesterday, when the NYPD released the crime statistics covering those dates, we finally have data to quantify some of the basic facts that will hopefully illuminate our understanding of the riots.

According to the data, Manhattan South – which is Manhattan south of Central Park – was the epicenter of the riots for both nights. On Sunday night the riots were concentrated below 14th Street, where 105 burglaries were recorded after midnight, the highest burglary numbers coming out of SoHo. The following night – the first night of the curfew – the riots were concentrated in lower midtown between 29th and 45th Streets between Ninth and Lexington Avenues, 132 burglaries being recorded north of 14th Street. The second night of rioting was distinct in that the looting spread outside of Manhattan South – the Upper East Side experiencing 25 burglaries south of 96th Street – as well as into the Bronx.

Tuesday also saw isolated looting, but did not reach the levels of the previous nights' full-blown riots, as the data and anecdotal reports make clear.

In terms of burglary counts, the second night of rioting was larger than the first night. In Manhattan South there were 139 burglaries reported for the calendar date of June the first. For the second of June that number increased slightly to 157. The Bronx, having skipped the first night of rioting, reported only 6 burglaries on the first, but exploded on the second night when 114 burglaries were reported.

Because the calendar days of the NYPD statistics begin at midnight, it creates a fragmented account of each day and night. From the statistics, it's ambiguous at times if a burglary occurred on the first or the second night of rioting. But if the entire four-day period bounding these two nights is looked at as a whole, the combined extent of the riots becomes abundantly clear.

For the four days starting Sunday morning and ending Wednesday evening, Manhattan South recorded 367 burglaries. That is up more than 15-fold from 24 burglaries for the same period the previous week, and 26 the week before that. The Bronx recorded 187 burglaries, up five-fold from 35 the previous week, and up 11-fold from 17 the week before that. City-wide, the burglary levels were 4.75 times higher for these days than in the previous week.

Put into another perspective, more burglaries were committed in these four days in the city than were committed in the previous 20 days combined.

No other boroughs than Manhattan and the Bronx experienced any statistically significant increase in burglary. In the days after the riots, the burglary levels tapered off to their usual amounts

Aside from burglary, there did not appear to be any statistically significant increase in any other report category.

While the extent of the looting during the riots has been made more clear, the police reports fail to describe the full spectrum of disorder that the riot inflicted. It is still not clear what the total value of looted goods was worth nor how much losses were sustained from property damage. The reports do not discuss vandalism of public property nor fires set to trash cans or vehicles. We'll have to wait for more data from more agencies for that. But it appears at least that the rioting was the single biggest crime event in the city since the 1977 blackout.

That is, in terms of blue-collar crime, anyway.

Coming soon: the original interactive crime map that accompanied this article before it was moved to Substack

Photo by John Bolger

It was a beautiful last day of May when protesters gathered on both sides of the East River. Despite the tragedy of George Floyd's murder, there was a rare optimism in the air as citizens of all races united on the streets to demand social change. With the picture perfect sunset radiating on the horizon, marchers made their way from Brooklyn across both vehicle lanes of the Manhattan Bridge as nearly every car's horn honked with delight in the day's final moments. But the troubles began after dusk, as is usually the case.

By 10 PM the peaceful march reached Bryant Park where its five and half mile journey was brought to a halt by a police riot line. Then protesters dispersed in all directions as police batons cut through the Sunday night and struck their bodies. The protest was over. In its place was the drumbeat to war. It started slowly at first, as disparate groups of youths made their way south. Trash can fires began appearing, then more frequently with each block. When bank windows started to turn up smashed it was clear the city was on the verge of something – but what? No one could have known.

Just as the clock struck midnight, the riot metastasized almost at once. For the next three hours SoHo was the epicenter of a full-blown riot, likely Manhattan's first in 50 years. The blocks between Houston and Canal Streets, and Broadway and West Broadway, were a complete free-for-all, with no organized police presence in the roughly twenty-block zone of luxury and high-end retail stores. There was looting, fire, brawling, someone was even shot. The crowd ruled absolutely. And any stray cop who found themselves here retreated in the closest direction to Houston, Broadway or Canal, where the police did have a fortified yet completely ineffectual presence. Most of the looting victims were high-end corporate brands, but make no mistake that locally-owned small businesses were spared.

Who were the rioters? In short, the rioters were not protesters. They were not "antifa". They were not the protesters earlier in the day who chanted and marched. There was no chanting during the riot. There was only the cacophony of hundreds of criminals looting every store in every direction systematically for blocks, operating in tight crews. It was a vast celebration of a windfall of profit. There were the loud booms of rioters breaking through the glass of one store after the other, the crashing of plywood ripped down proficiently from boarded storefronts, the grating of metal as roll down riot gates were pried off their tracks, the twinkling sound of glass crashing to the ground and crumbling beneath the feet of looters, the chorus of burglary alarms harmonizing with each other across streets, the roaring of motors as getaway cars and scooters drove wildly through SoHo, the stomping of thousands of feet against the quaint cobblestone streets, the distant sound of fire and police sirens many blocks away.

As the looters emptied the inventories of stores into their pockets, garbage bags, and just their hands, there was usually a getaway car not far away to relieve them of their loot before they would go right back and grab more merchandise from another store. This process repeated continuously. The looters for the most part all wore masks in the coronavirus fashion, but some wore ski masks. The majority were men but there were also crews of women, albeit the women exhibiting a different looting style, at times clashing verbally with the men but never resorting to blows. Citibikes were everywhere – presumably ripped by force from their kiosks as was done throughout the night – many of their riders with piles of loot sitting awkwardly in their laps. Scooters from Revel, the for-hire rental scooter app, were also everywhere, often with one person driving with a second person hitched on the back with a trash bag of loot.

The rioters had blockaded the streets leading to and in between the blocks of SoHo with any obstacle that could be dragged into the street – traffic cylinders, garbage cans, wooden pallets, police and ConEd barricades – presumably to stave off law enforcement. And it worked. At times a rioter would pull a blockade aside for their getaway driver to enter the vicinity of a looted store, and then they would close the street again. Other drivers just wildly ran over the debris or around it on the sidewalk. Many cars throughout the night had flat tires, but seemingly continued unphased. By my estimation, the looters were mostly organized and experienced criminals. For sure, some of the small crews of youths who committed random small-scale vandalism earlier in the night after the protest were in it too, but they seemed to be bit players in the riot, which was ruled mostly by who are likely career criminals. I have strong doubts that any of the crews with getaway drivers were present at the protests at all, most likely driving downtown explicitly to loot. The dynamic of the riot was highly organized, albeit appearing that it was the sum of scores of smaller teams of criminals, acting in concert yet competing with one another.

Through the looting there was the telltale calling of "YO!" that pierced through the raucous every few moments. This was understood by all to be a signal that a new store had been breached. With every "YO!" looters would stop what they were doing and begin running in mass in whatever direction it was, down the block and around corners, and then that store would be picked to the bone. As looters ran in every direction they would go about dropping loot – sneakers, winter coats, pants, and jackets – sometimes they would stop to pick it up, other times they would leave it to be trampled or picked up by others. There were empty boxes, tissue paper, and plastic packaging strewn about everywhere, ankle deep in places, as most looters would unbox the stolen goods thoroughly before unloading them into their getaway vehicles or into their garbage bags.

One of the most popular stores of the night was Gucci, which attracted the largest continuous mob that I witnessed that night. The Gucci store was looted continuously for over an hour. At times there was a rumor that "the cops are coming!" and there would be a brief stampede, but then moments later the looters would return, evidently because there never were any cops coming. The demand for Gucci was so high, that at times brawls broke out outside the store, as looters robbed one another for their stolen wares. Someone would come out of the store with more than they could defend and someone else would assault them and run off with the goods. At one point somebody tried to rob the wrong looter and he pulled out a baton-style stun gun. The armed looter took a defensive stance and rotated his hips slowly 180 degrees daring the crowd to attack. He was was not robbed.

Besides Gucci, looters also hit: Rolex, Chanel, Coach, Diesel, Burberry, Ugg, Patagonia, Dr. Martens, Moose Knuckles – too many to list exhaustively at this times. According to crime data released by the NYPD, for the first and fifth precincts, which encompass SoHo, 60 burglaries were counted for the two calendar days Sunday and Monday – the night and morning of the riot. That is up from four burglaries for the same period the previous week, and one for the week before that. Though SoHo was hit the hardest, burglaries for these two days was multiplied in every precinct south of Central Park – Manhattan South recording 173, up from 11 the previous week, and 14 the week before that.

By 2 AM looting continued throughout the blocks of SoHo but it was clear that the pickings were getting slim. A crowd reached Canal Street, and overhearing their ramblings, it was clear they were seeking and itching for the next target. There it was at Canal and Church Streets, a corner smoke shop. As a group began making clockwork of the riot gate, a crew of women looters voiced their disgust, "that ain't even a corporate store, that's a small business," and less than a minute later the store was breached and ransacked. Within a moment, looters were running in every direction with hookahs and bongs in both hands, handfuls of pipes and vaporizers.

Too late to save the store, a squad of police cars sped by in formation and looped around, scaring off looters, but the cops did not stop and no arrests were made. This was a common and completely useless tactic employed throughout the night by NYPD against the rioters outside the main riot zone in SoHo. There would be looters in a store, cop cars would drive by and blare their sirens, loop around, the looters would run, then the cops would speed off somewhere else. And then the looters would return to the very store sometimes ten seconds later. But at no point did I see any police on foot engage any looter and at no point did I see any rioter arrested.

A block south of the smoke shop, I came across a black man's body laying face down in the middle of the street, at Lispenard and Church Streets. His body was contorted in such unnatural ways that I assumed he was dead. The police blockaded the street and tried to hide the sight of him with their vans. I speculated that he was hit by a car. After the body was taken away in an ambulance, I asked a group of young high-school-aged girls sitting in a doorway what happened. Nonchalantly, one of them speculated the police had beaten the man. The girls were flanked by hookahs sitting on either side of them.

According to police records, someone was shot during the riots on Spring Street at Crosby Street. The New York Post reported that a 21-year-old looter was shot here in the back by a rival crew member for turf over looted stores. So far, there are no police records about the man I saw on Lispenard, and I have not read any news accounts of him.

Back on Canal, two men from the smoke shop surveyed the remains of their devastated store, looks of helpless resignation on their faces, as they struggled to understand why their small business had been destroyed.

Looting continued rampantly in SoHo, then on Broadway at Howard Street a scene of utter chaos unfolded. The Foot Locker was breached and looters swarmed. Someone lit a dumpster on fire and flames raged as the looters ran to and fro with sneakers in their arms. A police vehicle tried to chase a getaway car, then it bolted onto the sidewalk and accelerated madly with bystanders and looters jumping out of its way, myself included, the car narrowly missing my body before it broke free onto Broadway and sped off into the night uncaptured. The dumpster fire was out of control as construction debris inside was popping off spitting flames and smoke into the sky.

On Broadway I spoke with a black woman who was paid to guard the Chase Bank at Canal Street. She was shocked at what she saw, in disbelief as we all were that this could happen to lower Manhattan. We talked about George Floyd, that his murder and that of so many others was reprehensible. But we agreed that the riot had nothing to do with the protests. We both speculated that there would be a curfew the next day – which there was – and that the National Guard would be sent – which it was not. She was disturbed and we parted ways each wishing the other "be safe."

By 3 AM much of the rampant looting had died down and what was left were dispersed groups of looters, arms full of loot, wandering about unafraid as cop cars whirred occasionally in any direction, but not stopping. There were countless storefronts breached at this time and the remaining looters would casually rummage them as they encountered one, no longer running unless they saw a police officer. In wake of the mobs were bands of demoralized and humiliated police officers. As one resident stood outside the entrance to his apartment building, a sergeant walking by paused briefly, looked at the man, wordlessly shrugged his shoulders and resumed trudging again up the street. Minutes earlier, looters had breached a clothing store, but fled without taking much.

Walking up Broadway in the early twilight of the morning was a scene scarcely imagined. There were still small fires everywhere and trash splayed in every direction, broken glass, spray paint on nearly every surface, the acronyms FTP and ACAB and NYPD SMD written everywhere, and then cops guarding broken storefronts. Each cop with the same look of dejected humiliation on their face, looking away as I passed as if ashamed to make eye contact. There was the burnt hull of a destroyed NYPD smart car on the side of the road. I stopped to look at it, then at the riot officer guarding a looted storefront six feet away, his eyes looking as if restraining tears as he briefly looked into mine. The police were thoroughly defeated that night and they knew it. This was like the NYPD's fall of Saigon. There are officers who will never speak about what they saw that night. Some will drink it away, others will beat it out of protesters, some will quit, hopefully the good ones keep on, but that night disturbed each and every one of them to the core who saw the riots in SoHo.

As I reached Union Square, there was a Halal cook smoking a cigarette outside his cart. "Are you open?" I asked. He nodded. "I'll let you smoke your cigarette, don't worry." A group approached and asked to borrow his lighter. They lit a joint and gave the cook a hit. When he returned inside his cart to take my order, "were you open all night?" I asked. "All night," he said. I tipped him double then walked west on 14th Street to find a place to sit down. Fourteenth street had been looted between the park and Sixth Avenue. In Gamestop, the cardboard cutout of a cartoon raccoon standing amid a pile of broken glass and littered shelving, the riot gate flapping in the wind off its track. I struggled to eat my food without getting glass in it, many nearly and microscopic pieces being embedded in my fingers.

The subway was to re-open in ten minutes – the fact that it was closed in the first place itself being a strong symbol of the city's troubles amid 20 thousand coronavirus deaths to date, riots notwithstanding – then I left the city, knowing what everybody knew for months. That it would never be the same.

All photos by John Bolger. All photos depict events leading up to the second night of rioting.

The 2020 riots in New York City are very complicated events. Too complicated and too controversial to fit into any single news story. Too complicated even to fit into the many writings I’ve already published on the topic. My reporting continues, of course, and I will be publishing more about the riots in the future.

This is an index page meant to chronicle my reporting on the 2020 riots and protests. As I publish more stories about those events, I will update this page with references to my new work. In the mean, read some of the most comprehensive documentation anywhere to-date about what happened:

The Sunday Night Riots, Mass Looting in SoHo After Day of Peaceful Protest

Published June 7, 2020

My original first-hand account of what happened in Manhattan the night of May 31, 2020. After a day of peaceful protest, a full-blown riot breaks out in and around SoHo, with mass looting happening with no police intervention. The police’s response to the riots were in stark contrast to their response to the protests.

There were fires, brawls, and mass looting. The rioters were a distinct group from the protesters earlier in the day. The rioters did not have a political ideology, but were acting for profit.

Two Night of Riots Quantified, NYPD Crime Data Illuminates Some Aspects of the Riots

Published June 11, 2020

One week after the riots, the NYPD published its weekly crime statistics which offered a first look at what happened during the two nights of riots in Manhattan and the Bronx. Burglary levels spiked dramatically — over 600 burglaries in those two boroughs alone. The data makes clear that the 2020 riots were the largest mass crime event in New York City since the 1977 blackout.

(The original publication included an interactive animated map of burglaries city-wide, but it is not supported by Substack yet. The original map and more maps I am working on will be available in the near future.)

NYPD “Goon Squad” Manual Teaches Officers to Violate Protesters’ Rights

Published April 7, 2021 in The Intercept

This story marks my contributing debut for The Intercept and the start of a three-part series on the unrest, with Alice Speri. This reporting reveals for the first time the internal manuals and training courses for NYPD’s riot squad, the infamous Strategic Response Group, known for brutalizing protesters. The SRG was formed in 2015, early in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s tenure, as a reorganization of the NYPD’s disorder control functions in the wake of Occupy Wall Street. It marked a dramatic departure from the policies formed after the Crown Heights riots of 1991.

The SRG materials are required reading for understanding the NYPD’s failure to respond to the riots revealed in this series’ conclusion.

NYPD Took Hours to Respond to Mass Looting, Despite Quickly Cracking Down on Protests

Published June 1, 2021 in The Intercept

This story marks the one-year anniversary of the events in the Bronx, and the conclusion of The Intercept’s series. Revealed for the first time are the city’s real-time reports on the unrest as it happened. We now know what the city — and mayor — knew and when. On the first night of riots in SoHo, the NYPD did not respond for four hours. And we now know the city defined the riot’s size that night as greater than 90 city blocks.

In addition to the revelations about the city’s inexplicable lack of response, the story examines the tactical failures of the NYPD as illuminated by their SRG manuals and history. It tells the tragic story of Wendy Shen and her family — brutally beaten outside their Bronx store by rioters.

One reason why the NYPD failed so spectacularly during the riots was because lessons learned from the Crown Heights riots of 1991 were forgotten. The SRG training included zero tactics for looting scenarios, despite its predecessor having such tactics defined. The NYPD repeated the failed “fixed post” tactics that were documented in 1991 to have made those riots worse. The NYPD even adopted some of the tactics it used during the 1977 blackout riots. And the mayor lied about the whole thing.

NYPD Docs Clearinghouse Week

Published July 26, 2021 through July 31 in DocuDrop NYC

This five-part series was a pretense to purge the left over NYPD documents that weren’t published in The Intercept series. The Intercept series was based on thousands of pages of internal NYPD documents — too many to publish there. These documents and commentary range from inoccuous to severe. For scholars of NYPD policy, the publication of the NYPD Use of Force Guide will be of interest. For people looking for an NYPD-centric chronology of the Coronavirus, their “Finest Messages” on the topic will be of use. If you’re looking for heavy-hitting and documented analysis of the ways NYPD has tried to conceal what happened during the riots, the publication and analysis of some of their internal data will be very interesting. (There were even original political cartoons to accompany this series!)

Small Businesses Paid Staggering Price for 2020 Riots, New Data Reveals

Published December 31, 2021

Data from the Department of Small Business Services provides a rare measure of the impact the riots had on small businesses — particularly small businesses of the Bronx. It also documents emergency grant amounts the city awarded eligeable businesses in compensation for riot damages. The city’s awarded grants fall exponentially short of the reported damages.

Stay tuned for more documentation of the riots. I have a lot of reporting I have yet to publish, and new reporting that I am still undertaking. As the riots of 2020 were one of the most serious historic events in recent city history — events so rare that the NYPD itself took for granted they would never happen again — I will continue my reporting until everything is known. Especially since the mayor who presided over the riots — and lied about them — is now seeking to become governor.

Photo: the flagship Macy’s store on 34th Street, the day after it was looted during the second night of riots. By John Bolger.

The sun had not yet risen but in the final twilight of the Obama administration the streets of Washington DC were aflutter for the incoming commander in chief. By 5:30 AM protesters had arrived at the inaugural ceremony gates, which weren't scheduled to open until 6. As if a seed crystal for the wandering pre-dawn dissenters, the initial group of anti-Israeli occupation protesters quickly solidified into a show of force. With villainous contempt from the arriving aristocrats, and cautious indifference from the regular-class Trump supporters, soon the protesters attracted the attention of riot police. The sun rose on a nation in spiritual ruin, the divisions between the ruling classes, the people, reality, never so apparent as now.

At the "Blue Gate" to the National Mall, where Trump would be sworn in later, protesters started the day with chants and signs and banners decrying torture, Israeli and American human rights abuses, and worker exploitation. When the crowd reached significant mass and linked arms in an attempt to block the gate, US Capitol Police and US Border Patrol officers responded quickly and a brief, tense, yet peaceful, shoving match ensued. After a moment of squeezed bodies and a brief dispersal by riot police, the group again returned to the same spot and resumed their wall, albeit with the sidewalks open for blue-ticket-holding guests.

In the early hours of the ceremony there were massive protest gatherings at all the Mall gates, some hundreds strong. Although the early-morning protests were distributed between the inaugural entrances, Union Station, and K Street, in sum their numbers easily exceeded a few thousand. While black-clad protesters smashed the windows of Bank of America and Starbucks, a few blocks away a march was making its way past the "Red Gate" on its way to Union Station, growing in size as it vacuumed up protesters along its path.

The march went through Union Station and came out again to meet a gathering of communist, socialist and Black Lives Matter protesters at Columbus Circle across the street, where speakers took turns on the megaphone to discuss injustice. The crowd grew in size in preparation for the next march, where Water Protectors took the charge in solidarity with the North Dakota pipeline protesters.

Blocking traffic as it went down Massachusetts Avenue, the march drew minimal police attention as it passed the site of earlier smashed windows on I street and joined with protesters in McPherson and Franklin Squares.

The tone of the day changed drastically from that point on. As protesters and police wrested for control of K Street, whereas chants filled the air up until then, it was time for smoke and fire to dominate.

Explosions rang in the air: the Metropolitan Police Department was firing flash-bang grenades and pepper spray into the crowd, at protester and journalist alike. As tensions escalated, black-clad protesters dragged newspaper bins into the street as a make shift barricade against the advancing riot police. With each grenade launched into the crowd, protesters responded with bricks, hurled through the air at the incoming officers, their shields raised to absorb the blows of falling stone.

The crowd, having been pushed back to Franklin Square from 11th Street, had set fire to newspaper bins and trash cans that were dragged into the street. As a black police SUV pierced the crowd to make its way behind the riot police line, eggs and bricks were thrown at it, breaking its rear and side rear windows. Marches splintered from this group in multiple directions with the riot police maintaining tight control preventing progress west on K Street. "We the people" was spray-painted in gold on a bus stop.

As the presidential motorcade made its way to the White House, protesters set fire to a limousine parked outside the Washington Post building. The limousine burned for a few minutes, billowing thick plumes of black smoke into the sky, with the inaugural parade only a few blocks away. Riot police quickly secured the area as the fire raged, using flash bang grenades at times. Moments later the fire department arrived and doused the flame, engulfing the street in sheets of thick smoke. Forensic investigators examined the limousine for hours as riot police held the vicinity tight.

It was a decisive moment in the day. It was the first time a car had been set on fire during a presidential inauguration in decades, perhaps ever. Barely half a block from the site of the torched vehicle, black-clad protesters ripped more bricks from the median at K Street, preparing for the next volley.

As small trash fires littered K Street into the night, peaceful marches continued through the streets of Washington DC. At one point a march of protesters staged a sit-in in front of the Chinatown arches at H Street. Although the numbers were down from their daytime peak, the march still commanded over a hundred protesters. Less than 12 hours later, a million demonstrators would converge on the capital for the Women's March -- but on day one of the Trump regime there were thousands, and they welcomed him into history with bricks and fire. Will the fight sustain for four years? The government sure hopes not.

Both entrance and exit to Zuccotti Park were blocked when a call for backup was issued over the police radios and dozens of officers swarmed the park’s center on Nov. 17, jumping over the barricades along the park’s north side. After a moment’s confusion two people were arrested, one injured, bleeding from his head and appearing dazed.

Brandon Watts, 20, missing a boot and bleeding profusely, was brought to the southeast corner of the park by police. Barricades separating tens of journalists and photographers from the sealed park were quickly pushed back as Watts entered the vicinity, effectively preventing the media from getting close to the story. As a result, accounts of the incident in the main stream press have been limited to police statements issued later that day. Luckily, the Envoy was in the park.

As Watts sat bleeding in the park, a member of the Occupy Wall Street medical team attempted to treat his wounds. The medic was dragged away by police. Watts sat in the park under police supervision for approximately 15 minutes before he was moved to a police van. According to police statements circulated in the New York Times and the Daily News, Watts was treated at Bellevue Hospital, although it is unclear precisely how long Watts was made to wait for medical treatment.

Several eye witnesses at the park told the Envoy that Watts’s injuries were sustained when police jumped over the barricade and began to chase Watts. When the police caught him, he was pushed to the ground and, in the words of one witness, “it looked like they were just pummeling him, it was useless.” According to statements issued by the NYPD, Watts threw a AAA battery at an officer, provoking the police swarm and subsequent arrest. Neither account of the incident could be verified, however Watts’ bloody image was made famous on the cover of the Daily News and the webpages of the New York Times and the Guardian.

“The first officer I talked to actually nodded and motioned me through the line of other police officers,” said Miriam Rocek, 25, the member of the Occupy medical team who tried to help Watts. “I got maybe two or three feet from him and just about to examine him ... and then another police officer just grabbed me and dragged me away.”

Rocek said she had received first aid, CPR, and firefighting training for previous licensing she acquired. She wasn’t surprised by the police response, “it has been my experience throughout Occupy Wall Street protests that once people are in police custody, the police are very reluctant to let us treat them” she said. The only time police allowed her to treat an arrestee, she said, was one time when a protester began to suffer an asthma attack under police custody.

“I would say that they don’t want people to be aware of how much damage they have done to protesters that are arrested,” she said. “They don’t necessarily care whether these people who are arrested receive any medical treatment or not.” Kevin Stanley, 24, a registered nurse and part of the Occupy medical team, said incidents like these were common. In one instance Stanley described, police began to push people back. One protester was singled out and flipped onto the ground, landing on his head and creating an “ungodly crack.” Stanley immediately notified police of his medical qualifications and told them that the protester required immediate medical attention.

“I was pleading [with the officers] that he needed medical treatment,” he said. “They clarified he needed to be issued a summons first ... When you have a trained medical technician telling you he needs assistance, if he dies it’s on your head.”

Rocek sees the Occupy movement as a warzone between NYPD and protesters where not all sides abide by the rules. “There is an understanding, in war for example, that people who are providing medical treatment are sort of [off limits],” she said. “It doesn’t seem to be something the police consider as valid.”

Graphic from The Young Turks