NYC Mayor Blames Protesters for Cops Who Drove SUVs Through a Crowd of People
Hours after two NYPD SUVs were caught on camera plowing through protesters in Brooklyn, scattering bodies and sending one protester flying through the air, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said late Saturday he wished those officers had taken “a different approach.”
“I’m not going to blame officers who are trying to deal with an absolutely impossible situation,” de Blasio said at a press conference late Saturday. “The NYPD, all day long, has been working hard. It’s been a very, very difficult day for our officers. Some of them have been put into very dangerous situations, and that’s not appropriate.”
In a pair of videos taken at the scene, one SUV-sized NYPD car can be seen pulling up to a steadily gathering crowd of protesters, who place a makeshift barricade in front of the vehicle.
As demonstrators throw what appear to be a few plastic bottles and a traffic cone at the car, a second NYPD SUV pulls up alongside the first. That second car keeps driving forward, straight into the crowd — and then the first car does the same.
The cars push protesters back several feet, throwing some to the ground. People started to scream.
An unnamed law enforcement source told CBS News that the police weren’t trying to “ram” the protesters but to “go forward and escape.” In the videos, protesters are not behind the cop cars as they accelerate forward — so they could have backed up instead.
“It’s inappropriate for protesters to surround a police vehicle and threaten police officers. That’s wrong on its face,” de Blasio said. “If a police officer is in that situation, they have to get out of that situation. The video was upsetting, and I wish the officers hadn’t done that, but I also understood that they didn’t start that situation.”
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Queens Democrat, condemned both the video and de Blasio’s comments on Twitter.
“Defending and making excuses for NYPD running SUVs into crowds is wrong,” she said. “Running SUVs in crowds of people should never, ever be normalized. No matter who does it, no matter why.”In the six days since video emerged of the killing of 46-year-old George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, dozens of cities across the United States have erupted in civil unrest. Saturday marked the third night of protests in New York City, and several incidents of the NYPD endangering protesters have emerged since Friday.
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