2004 Republican National Convention Protest Activity - Police Tactics and Pier 57

Police Tactics and Pier 57

Concerns have been raised about police tactics in arresting nonviolent protesters with many apparently innocent people being swept up in mass arrests.

Guantanamo on the Hudson was a term coined during the Republican National Convention by a lawyer who, amongst 1000 other people, was detained in a facility by the New York City Police, in such conditions that he said that the city had created its "own little Guantanamo on the Hudson" (an allusion to the tortures reported in prisoners camps in Guantanamo).

The City police closed a street adjoining Union Square where protesters were marching, arresting protesters and bystanders alike. People were required to show identification cards or face arrest; the arrested people were not immediately informed of charges against them.

The facility was the then-recently closed Hudson Pier Depot at Pier 57 on the Hudson River in Manhattan, a three-story, block-long pier that has been converted into a temporary holding facility, though unfit for detention of prisoners. Arrested protesters have complained about extremely poor conditions describing it as overcrowded, dirty, and contaminated with oil and asbestos. People reported having suffered from smell, bad ventilation, and even chemical burns and rashes

Numerous troubling cases were reported, notably:

• A 15-year-old diabetic girl on her way to a movie was arrested.
• A former vice president of Morgan Stanley was arrested while riding her bicycle.
• A 16-year-old protestor was lost to her mother for two days, even though her mother knew about and supported her daughter's participation.
• Small pens were used to contain "30 to 40 people" at once.
• Many people were detained longer than 24 hours on relatively trivial charges. One was a 23-year-old Montreal student arrested for disorderly conduct and released three days later. "He says he spent a total of 57 hours between the pier and Central Booking, during which time he says he was moved 14 times and repeatedly handcuffed and shackled to other protesters as young as 15."

The City reportedly refused to release the prisoners until a judge threatened to fine it for every extra hour every prisoner would spend in prison. The victims of the arrests have filed lawsuits against the City of New York.

One of the most prominent personalities arrested was Eric Corley "Emmanuel Goldstein", an important advocate of public rights and independent media, and editor of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly. The complete report of 2600 is available at http://www.2600.com/rnc2004/.

Several cases have since gone to court, and it has come out that the charges of resisting arrest in those cases were completely fabricated. Video evidence was shown of defendants complying peaceably with police demands. Many of the cases have since been summarily dismissed. Some of them, as of 2011, however, remain open and are expected to proceed to trial.

The New York Times has reported on two occasions that the police videotaped and infiltrated protests, as well as acting as agents provocateurs during the protests.

In addition, the New York Times reported that prior to the protests, NYPD officers traveled as far away as Europe and spied on people there who planned to protest at the RNC.