De Blasio orders probe into NYPD cops ramming protesters with SUVs
Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday ordered an urgent investigation into cops who rammed NYPD SUVs into a crowd in Brooklyn — while openly blaming the protesters.
“I did not want to ever see something like that, and I don’t want to ever see it again,” he said of the “disturbing” video that showed the squad vehicles driving into demonstrators on Flatbush Avenue Saturday.
“Clearly, we need to do a full investigation and look at the actions of those officers,” he said.
An independent review has already been called to probe police handling of the George Floyd protests, the mayor said, joining NYPD’s own internal reviews.
The team — helmed by the city’s Corporation Counsel, Jim Johnson, and Investigation Department Commissioner Margaret Garnett — will share “very quick results” of “an initial evaluation” by June, de Blasio said.
However, Hizzoner again seemed to have reached his own conclusion, blaming the protesters rather than the officers who drove into them.
“That situation was created by a group of protesters blocking and surrounding a police vehicle,” he insisted at the press briefing, calling it a common tactic “that can be very very dangerous to everyone involved.”
“And we’ve seen direct attacks on police officers, including in their vehicles,” Hizzoner continued, saying it created a “backdrop where a police officer had been attacked before in the exact same situation.”
“The one thing they couldn’t do was stay there,” he insisted of the officers placed in an “extremely dangerous situation.
“Let’s not kid ourselves,” he said. “If anyone else was inside that police vehicle surrounded by people, you would have had a really tough decision to make,” he said, insisting of the officers, “You can’t stay there, you can’t get out of the vehicle.”
“It was a very dangerous, tense, complex situation. And the humanity of all people involved must be considered in the equation.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday that he has instructed the state Attorney General to probe the incident.
“Those videos are truly disturbing. Some of the videos, frankly, are inexplicable to me,” he said. “I am telling them that if the review looks at those videos and finds there was improper police conduct, there will be ramifications.”
The protests were mostly led by a new breed of violent anarchists, de Blasio insisted.
“They were seeking to do violence. And someone seeking to do violence I don’t have any sympathy for,” he said.
Additional reporting by Aaron Feis