Former president Donald Trump’s recent rally at Madison Square Garden has election safety advocates fearing further political unrest in the Big Apple.
The NAACP’s Dr. Hazel Dukes called Sunday’s Trump rally “a disgrace to America” in an interview with the AmNews and blamed the former president for racialized division across the country. The longtime civil rights leader says the NAACP will work with law enforcement to ensure nobody is harassed or intimidated while in line to vote on November 5.
“On Election Day, if we see anything, hear anything, we are reporting it,” said Dukes over the phone. “We have command centers that our lawyers — the NAACP lawyers — will lay out across the country, even here in New York State.”
Leading up to Sunday’s rally, Mayor Eric Adams refused to call Trump a fascist and asked New Yorkers to “dial down the temperature” over rhetoric concerning the former president.
“This is America, this is New York, and I think it’s important that we allow individuals to exercise their right to get their message clear, to New Yorkers, and our job as a city and as a police department is to make sure they can do that in a peaceful way,” said Adams during his press conference.
A guide to navigating polling place problems on Nov. 5 (from the reporting of AmNews political reporter Ariama C. Long) |
| – for the five boroughs in New York City, voters should contact their county BOE with any issues at 1-866-Vote-NYC (866-868-3692) – The Election Protection Coalition’s hotline is 866-OUR-VOTE/866-687-8683 and the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project hotline is 877 523-2792 – get registered or check that your status is active and check for your proper polling place https://amsterdamnews.com/election2024/ – a person can vote in New York who is 18 years of age or older (pre-registration starts at 16), a state resident for at least a month before the election, a U.S.-born or naturalized citizen; not currently in prison for a felony conviction or in jail awaiting trial, or is on parole or probation or under supervised release – you need to say your name and address when you get to your polling place – voters don’t need to show identification or state ID to vote, unless you are a first-time voter who did not provide ID when registering – if you do not appear on the active voter registration list, then you are entitled by state law to a paper ballot and an affidavit envelope |
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams expressed disappointment in Adams’s comments given “there’s literally only one side that has been promoting and pushing violence this whole time.” While Williams doesn’t believe every rally attendee this past Sunday aligns with the racist remarks made by Trump’s allies, he certainly feels there are valid parallels to the 1939 Nazi rally at the Garden.
“Trump is already saying that they’re cheating in Michigan and we’re not even finished with the election and they’re [already] trying to incite folks,” said Williams over the phone. “My hope is that it doesn’t happen, so I don’t want to say it definitely will. But the type of things that are being said [in] Project 2025 and the MSG rally, they have always been a part of this country. I like to think I’m a part of the country that always pushes back on that and [tries to] help us be our better selves.”
For the rally, the NYPD deployed a “large” police presence encompassing Madison Square Garden with undercover officers embedded around the area. West 32nd and West 33rd Streets from Sixth to Seventh Avenue were closed off to vehicles and pedestrians. NYPD Deputy Commissioner Rebecca Weiner said the NYPD was not tracking any specific credible threats but deemed the rally a “very elevated threat environment generally.”
“We’re applying a lot of resources to this, not just because of the hypothetical what-ifs, but because of everything we’re seeing unfold across the country and around the world, and that’s why we’re going to be very well prepared for tomorrow,” said Weiner during the Mayor’s Office press conference.
Election-related violence, like the January 6th insurrection, often stems from impromptu unrest according to Brian Higgins, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He says while social media monitoring and intelligence gathering can root out those looking ahead to incite violence, stopping people from getting caught up in the moment can be trickier. Even in sports crowds can become “overly energetic” and turn violent.
“Putting those measures in place and being prepared for [the election] is part of law enforcement’s job and their day-to-day responsibilities,” said Higgins. “The positive about this is we have dates, we know on Nov. 5 and the following day or two, when the outcome, when the elections are called, is when if there’s any issues, we’ll see [them] … you have two elements right here: the back of it — the social media posting, the gathering of people, the messaging — and then, of course, you have the physical: people who are physically gathering items that are being purchased or brought to potential protest cycles. “There also has to be within the police department, this preparation for those days. I’m sure officers are able to put on alert, [reassigning] their days off or vacation days flocked for those days leading from November on forward [for] at least a week.”
Higgins, a former police chief for New Jersey’s Bergen County, says law enforcement operate on a crowd management/crowd control binary when preventing political unrest. Crowd management focuses on gauging the “tenor of the crowd” even when totally peaceful. By the time crowd control is needed to handle violence and unrest, there is little police can do than to let it boil over or respond with force themselves. Still, there’s no direct formula.
“Policing is generally responding to the unknown, 24/7,” said Higgins. “Even though police officers have been to those incidents, we’ve seen similar incidents across the country [and] we’ve learned from those every time. Every one of those incidents has some element that’s slightly different. It’s not like a recipe, right?”
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.