(Note:Sources say Holiday not a protestor; rather, a troubled young man with a history of violence, petty crimes, drug possession charges, and orphanage-expulsions who, "probably just wanted the opportunity to kick a cop in the head.")
(New York Times)
Prosecutors drew up felony assault charges yesterday against a 20-year-old Manhattan man who the police said admitted to punching and kicking a plainclothes police detective who was knocked off his scooter after a largely peaceful protest march became unruly Monday night.
The man, Jamal Holiday, of East 116th Street, was arrested just before 8 p.m. on Tuesday at another protest, in Union Square Park, after two detectives recognized him from images of the Monday night assault, which was captured by an NY1 television news photographer. Holiday's lawyer stated at his arraignment last night that "a man not dressed as a police officer drove a scooter into a crowd of women and children.'' (more...)
Those evil Imperial Troopers...
Holiday, foolishly wearing the same clothes as the night before, was easily ID'd thanks to a local reporter's photo shot.
The Times has an interesting take on the situation...
[sic] when the march reached the demonstration area, some protesters clashed with the police in a disturbance that civil liberties lawyers said was caused by the department's handling of the marchers. News videotape of the incident showed several other plainclothes officers lurching their scooters into protesters.You mean... someone videotaped the officers engaging the protestors?
Kinda like when the conveniently prepared amateur cameraman misses the first 10 minutes of the action?
Paul J. Browne, a department spokesman, said Detective Sample was responding to another officer's radio call for assistance, which came after police sought to place barricades across the southern end of the intersection at 29th Street and Eighth Avenue. But the New York Civil Liberties Union said yesterday that as the police stretched barricades across Eighth Avenue, they did not tell the crowd what was happening, an action that the groups said sowed chaos.In other words, the Imperial Guard deliberately flew their Tie Fighters directly into a peaceful band of rebel forces known as the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign. (Since when were poor people educated enough to know what economic human rights were? And probably as products of NYC's public school system, no less?)
Meanwhile, the Daily News reports a somewhat different story...
Detective William Sample was trying to prevent protesters from breaking through a police barricade at Eighth Ave. and 29th St. when he was pulled off his scooter and kicked repeatedly in the head. [...]So...basically the plain-clothes officers were responding to a call after the protestors (sans a legal permit...mind you) began attempting to overcome the police barricades.Sample was injured after cops let a group called the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, which had rallied outside the United Nations, march through the city even though it did not have a permit to do so.
Along the way, another officer was socked in the face. And when the crowd neared the Garden, troublemakers tried to push through police barricades.
The Times says, "While the protesters had no permit, they reached a last-minute accord with the police to march as long as they stayed in a single lane."
Apparently, it is rather difficult to move past street barricades while remaining in a single-file line.
CBSNew York describes the scene in a degree of detail that is nowhere to be found in the Times article,
"Hundreds of police in riot gear and on horses swept in to disperse the crowd, shouting, "Move!" Less than a dozen arrests were made as protesters yelled back, 'Whose streets? Our streets!'"CBS also inserted a quote not found in the Times piece around the section referring to the NYPD permitting the permit-less group to march...
"They asked if they could march, and we said yes," police Assistant Deputy Commissioner Tom Doepfner said. "We try to be nice."Well, Tom, I don't know how long you've been "Assistant Deputy Commissioner" (what is that the equivalent of, executive assistant? gopher? coffee bitch?) but this is, as the $14 t-shirts say,
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