I’m in the Bronx tonight for #FTP4 — the first #GeorgeFloydNYC protest organized by @decolonize_this. Dozens of cops on every corner, stationed on a roof, circling in armor on bikes. 
Bronxites for NYPD Accountability Co-Founder Shannon Jones says @NYCMayor is culpable: “These are Democrats fucking up your lives. We already got bamboozled by the biracial kid. We fucked up on that one....but fool me once.”
We stopped outside La Morada on Willis Ave, where owner Natalie Hernandez has been serving free meals during COVID-19 — and also, organizers says, faced harassment from ICE.
Chants of “La policía, la migra, la misma porquería”
Chants of “La policía, la migra, la misma porquería”
Just before 8 this group of heavily armored bike cops intercepted the group. Yelled “move” and knocked people back with bikes all at once. Now we’re kettled on this hill
Cops charged from the back with batons out. Multiple people hit. Someone bleeding from the head. I jumped over a car and am out because of a press base. This wasn’t even a confrontation it was a trap
This group is pinned, and a new group of cops just showed up with wooden batons. There was no violence, no bottles. People didn’t even see the cops in front of them til it was too late (interview with a witness at the end)
Cops just pushed group forward. Another batch of cops run in. Cops now crowding the street of witnesses claiming curfew
They’re dragging people out one by one. It looks like a mosh pit in there. To be clear this was a peaceful protest that cops surrounded and charged at 8 pm on the dot
Threatening bystanders with arrest. “alright who wants to go to jail tonight?”
They’re arresting legal observers. (Courtesy @CSMuncyPhoto)
@NYPDChiefofDept was here for all of this. Here he is ordering the arrest of Shannon Jones as the group behind him gets kettled
“I just saw a woman get her head bashed in because she walked away from an officer and didn’t walk away fast enough, says David Perez, a Mott Haven resident. “Are we in America. Did I wake up in another fucking country?”
At the top of the hill they’re processing the arrestees. Medics and photographers among them. A woman is pulled out in a stretcher. I asked an officer what the point was and he shook his head and said “Eight o’clock”
A line of detainees getting loaded onto a corrections bus. China Williams says he’s a janitor at an HRA building nearby who was leaving work when he was “bum-rushed”
