More than 1,000 New Yorkers are still facing potential fines and jail time for violating a curfew imposed by Mayor Bill de Blasio on June 1st, which was created in response to property damage and looting in the early days of protests following the police killing of George Floyd. At his daily press briefing on Thursday, de Blasio declined to say whether he thought those people should still be punished for the crime of staying out past 8 p.m.
“It’s just too simplistic to say that’s the whole story,” de Blasio said. “We had the curfew for a purpose because we saw too much violence of different kinds, and we had to end the violence and we did end the violence. And now adjudicating what should happen in each case depends on the specifics of the case. That’s just all there is to it.”
Many of the 1,349 New Yorkers who still have open criminal summonses solely for violating de Blasio’s curfew were physically detained for hours by the police. Others were seriously injured by members of the NYPD who were enforcing the mayor’s curfew, which de Blasio ended up rescinding one night early.
Nearly half of those who were written criminal summonses for curfew violation were Black, according to data from the NYPD—569 people were Black or Black and Hispanic, 280 were white Hispanics, 413 were white, 59 were Asian.
Violating curfew is a Class B Misdemeanor, punishable with a fine of up to $500 and as much as three months in jail or both, according to New York State penal code. Many curfew violators are due in summons court in the coming months.
The curfew violations stand apart from the criminal cases pending on charges related to the protests, like unlawful assembly or disorderly conduct. As of last week, the DAs in Brooklyn and Manhattan had dismissed 227 of those 1,126 criminal cases.
District Attorneys in the Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn, where the vast majority of protest arrests and summons occurred, had all pledged to dismiss low-level criminal charges. But their offices typically don’t intervene in criminal summons court where the curfew summonses are adjudicated, though it is within their jurisdiction to do so, according to court officials.
In the past, the NYPD, the state’s Office of Court Administration and District Attorneys offices have coordinated to unilaterally dismiss certain kinds of cases, like outstanding summonses warrants for missed court dates on low level offenses.
Last week, public defenders across the city called on the District Attorneys to override that long-standing policy of not weighing in in summons court, to step in and toss all of the curfew violations, as well as other protest arrests and ones for social distancing enforcement violations.
Representatives from the Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Bronx DAs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Jennvine Wong, a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society’s Cop Accountability Project called de Blasio’s remarks “a deflection.”
“NYPD used the curfew against protestors—not looters—and arguably as a means to suppress protected first amendment activity,” she said.
Additional reporting by Jake Offenhartz.
