Mayor Bill de Blasio said he was troubled by the NYPD's decision to throw a teenager into unmarked minivan during a protest — but defended the plainclothes officers who executed the snatch-and-grab arrest for just doing their jobs.
"I think it was the wrong time and the wrong place to effectuate that arrest," the mayor told reporters on Wednesday morning. "The arrest as I understand was for damaging police property. I want to affirm very clearly: No one is allowed to damage police property. That is a real offense."
Video showed plainclothes officers with the NYPD's warrant squad grabbing Nicki Stone, an 18-year-old trans activist, from the front of a Manhattan protest against police brutality on Tuesday night. As uniformed NYPD officers form a circle around the van with their bikes, she's pushed into a KIA minivan by multiple plainclothes cops, who then drive south on Second Avenue.
According to an NYPD spokesperson, Stone was wanted for spray painting four NYPD surveillance cameras near the Occupy City Hall encampment, as well as other graffiti incidents in the area. She was released early Wednesday morning with a desk appearance ticket for criminal mischief.
The spokesperson did not respond to inquiries about why the department used plainclothes officers and an unmarked van to arrest an activist on low-level charges in the middle of a political demonstration.
"It has to be a tactical decision," said Gideon Oliver, a civil rights attorney and former president of the National Lawyers Guild NYC chapter. "The only reasonable conclusion you can draw is that the police decided to do this to send a message to scare and chill protesters."
“I’ve never heard of a warrant squad arresting someone at a protest in 16 years,” he added. (Disclosure: Oliver is currently representing Gothamist/WNYC in a separate legal matter.)
Other protesters said that Stone, who is homeless, was one of the most visible activists during the occupation of City Hall park. "They're targeting our leaders," Derrick, a 32-year-old protester, told Gothamist. "That's what's going to happen now."
The arrest sparked national outrage and drew comparisons to federal agents grabbing protesters off the street in Portland, Oregon. De Blasio said he understood the concern, but stopped short of blaming NYPD officers for any wrongdoing.
"Members of the warrant squad going to arrest someone who has an outstanding warrant is actually their job," he said on Wednesday. "This is a question of making sure there’s coordination to understand we’re in a particular historical moment where there has to be sensitivity, where folks are understandably worried about what they see coming out of Washington."
"Anything that even slightly suggests that is to me troubling and the kind of thing we don’t want to see in this city," he added.
But activists and attorneys stressed that the NYPD's use of warrant squads predated the Trump administration's action in Portland.
"In Black and brown communities, the NYPD regularly make these abduction-like arrests, and it must stop immediately," said Corey Stoughton, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society.
The mayor also said he was not aware of evidence backing up the NYPD's claim that protesters were throwing rocks at police officers. According to organizers, protesters were marching peacefully when they were suddenly set upon by police, who pepper sprayed onlookers as they hustled Stone into the unmarked van.
Another angle of the arrest shows protesters throwing two water bottles into the chaotic scene, one of which strikes an officer. There do not appear to be any rocks.
Asked whether the decision to execute the arrest might damage the NYPD's reputation, de Blasio insisted the incident was an anomaly, and was not indicative of larger problems within the department.
“Is it frustrating what sometimes a vision isn’t being fully played out on the ground by any agency? Of course it’s frustrating," he said. "I look at the big picture. A lot of change has happened. I have no question in the ability of the NYPD to keep changing, and it will keep changing, and that’s what matters.”
"I don’t believe mistakes like that are the fundamental reality," he added.
