What do you say to an organization that kept a city safe and well-ordered during the first major political event following a terrorist attack that killed nearly 2,700 people?
“Shut up and cough up $18 million!!”
That seems to be Mayor de Blasio’s take on the settlement the city reached Wednesday on multiple federal lawsuits stemming from mass arrests during the 2004 Republican National Convention. It all comes to a tidy payout.
Did some people get arrested who shouldn’t have been? Quite likely.
Did cops sweep up some idle passersby in their large dragnets? So it would seem.
From today’s vantage point, it’s easy to chalk this up to police intolerance. The reality is that what happened reflected the concerns and context of the time. The 2004 GOP convention was held at a New York City landmark — Madison Square Garden — less than three years after the 9/11 attacks that brought down the Twin Towers.
In addition, such events had been home to increasingly violent protests, such as the ones that consumed Seattle in 1999. With the president of the United States in town, the NYPD had to ensure security and handle demonstrators, all while enabling everyday New Yorkers to go about their business with minimum inconvenience. So we’re glad the city settlement included no admission of wrongdoing.
If only the mayor let it go at that. “We’re going to take a very different view going forward about how we respect people’s rights to express themselves,” he said. On behalf of the people of this city, let’s just say we hope he doesn’t get what he seems to be wishing for.