The protesters at Occupy Wall Street get their First Amendment rights violated on a regular basis. They’re rounded-up, thrown to the ground, punched and pepper sprayed like animals by the police. Yet today, the New York Police Department is planning to sue any protester who “causes injury” to a police officer.
Reporting from the New York Post today quoted the president of NYPD’s Sergeant’s Benevolent Association as saying;
“In light of the growing violence attendant to the ‘Occupy’ movements across the country, particularly as evidenced by the recent events in Oakland, I am compelled to place these so-called ‘occupiers’ on notice that physical assaults on police officers will not be tolerated.”
Of course no one is advocating violence at any of the Occupy movement protests, and all the police departments across the country know this. Of all the thousands of protesters nationwide, it is almost impossible to find Occupiers demonstrating violence against the police. There may be a handful of incidents, but in the grand scheme of things, given the many thousands of protesters on the streets, two or three incidents nationwide is nothing to sue over.
So is this a plausible argument by the New York Sergeant Benevolent Association? Of course not.
The unnecessary amount of arrests police departments nationwide have taken part in, have nothing to do with unruly protesters, but everything to do with police trying to suppress the people’s rights to protest. If the police will just do their jobs, instead of intentionally perpetrating violence against peaceful protesters, then for the most part, calmness will prevail.
Maybe the New York Sergeant Benevolent Association should look at the instigators instead, and realize that the violence begins, for the most part, inside their own ranks.
