Back in May, the Legal Aid Society (LAS) asked the Department of Investigation to look into the NYPD “unlawfully” holding and processing pro-Palestinian protesters during the highly-publized mass arrests at Columbia University and City College of New York on April 30.
The letter alleged at least 46 demonstrators were “unlawfully detained and processed” rather than issued desk appearance tickets (DATs) based on the legal defense organization’s review of the charges.
Bail reform legislation amending the New York Criminal Procedure Law in 2020 requires police to issue appearance tickets for many low-level criminal charges instead of traditionally arresting and detaining the alleged offender. The reforms curb pre-arraignment lockups and generally reduce interaction between New Yorkers and law enforcement. Police usually release those issued with an appearance ticket shortly after an arrest.
Jennvine Wong, supervising attorney of LAS’ Cop Accountability Project, says unique to protests arrests are mass processing centers like the one student demonstrators were bussed to at One Police Plaza. She says such facilities are justified due to efficiency, but can involve shuttling people past numerous precincts, including those who should not be held for pre-arraignment detention. In the case of the April 30 protests, demonstrators were taken from north of 110th Street all the way down to outside the Brooklyn Bridge.
“We’ve seen from 2020 [and] from recently, [protesters] get summonses and desk appearance tickets, and they get told to return to court,” she said. “So there is a real question here about whether or not they should be taken to a mass processing center at all, or whether they could be taken nearby off site and then given the summons and DATs at some other location and then released immediately.”
Columbia doctorate student Allie Wong (no relation to Jennvine Wong), one of the first protesters arrested and brought into One Police Plaza, recalled the chaos. Police separated demonstrators by gender, packing the men in a bullpen while initially placing women in individual cells.
“But they started packing them with other folks, once more arrests happened, and so for women, we were [in] a single file line being led into the women’s quarters,” she said. “It’s the women’s quarters in the sense that that’s where women are put, but it’s not women’s quarters in the sense that there are only women there. There were men everywhere.”
Wong did not receive medical care in custody despite sustaining an injury during the arrest. When protesters witnessed alleged police misconduct during the booking process, Wong says they chanted the allegedly offending officer’s badge number and name, along with choruses of “we’re going to sue you.”
But concerns over appropriate DAT issuance are not unique to this past spring’s protests nor to protests in general. LAS’ current pending litigation against the NYPD alleges custody arrests against Black Lives Matter protesters during summer 2020 for charges mandating desk appearance tickets instead. And proper DAT issuance plays a generally large role in the day-to-day carceral system.
“They are acute with protesters, but I just want to emphasize that it’s not just limited to protesters,” said Jennvine Wong. “This happens in the criminal legal system every day. And that’s a problem.”
To be clear, there remains some police discretion when deciding between issuing a DAT or conducting a custody arrest. But they center largely around gender-based violence, bail jumping, and charges leading to a suspended or revoked license. And Black and Brown New Yorkers face disproportionately higher rates of custody arrests for offenses typically reserved for DAT issuance, as reported by the AmNews in March.
The NYPD did not respond to requests for comment by press time. In May, the OIG confirmed receiving LAS’ letter, but did not comment further on whether an investigation will happen.
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Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.