Mayor Bloomberg Defends NYPD's Handling Of Press During Raid

Mayor Bloomberg is still defending the NYPD's raid on Occupy Wall Street in November.

In two separate incidents this week, the Mayor addressed criticism from journalists who say they were "roughed up" and blocked from covering the raid, forcibly enforcing a media blackout on police activities.

During his weekly radio appearance on Friday morning, Bloomberg insisted:

We didn't keep anybody from reporting, you just had to stand to the side. You don't have a right as a press person to stand in the way just in the interest of getting the story...(regarding the clearing in general) the police show amazing restraint. This is the greatest police department in the world. The number of times police fire their weapons here is so much less than any other police department.

Following the raid, the Society of Professional Journalists condemned the city's actions and went on to say that the Mayor's efforts insinuated what "would seem to be a strategic decision to cloak potentially volatile police activity from the public."

Earlier this week, congressman Jerrold Nadler called for an investigation into the NYPD's conduct during the highly criticized raid and cited the especially disconcerting accusations of blocking journalists from properly reporting the events that ensued.

On Thursday, Mayor Bloomberg took a rather bitter shot at Nadler and dismissed any need for an investigation. He told reporters at an appearance in Brooklyn, "If (Nadler) would spend more time getting us homeland security money, maybe he’d make the streets safer."

Nadler responded to the scathing remarks:

It is precisely my job, as the ranking member on the House Judiciary's Constitution Subcommittee, to ensure that the constitutional rights of all Americans are respected...Perhaps the mayor should review his own past comments lauding my success in securing needed federal funds for our city — from the $20 billion post-9/11 monies to the Zadroga Act to critical transportation funding — before spewing nonsense and so wildly contradicting himself.

 

 

Comments

[Dianekkdi]

10:36 PM on 12/12/2011

a police state within the United States is indefensible.

http://www.westcoastportshutdown.org/content/record-police-violence-during-d12-actions

spread the word. We will not be unknown, unrecorded, or denied.

[SONYA1987]

05:27 AM on 12/12/2011

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[Lawrence Neal]

01:26 PM on 12/11/2011

Don't allow the brutal assaults to be forgotten. Display your outrage. Make Pike's name synonymous with pepper spray. Log onto:

http://www.cafepress.com/qqqquips/8340041

[stargazer13]

01:22 PM on 12/11/2011

look he has no clothes ? :)

[stargazer13]

01:17 PM on 12/11/2011

yeah well it still don't make it right just because you say it

Maybe?
Banks should just fund the NYPD permanent from now on :)
how ? much ? would that save New Yorks Tax payers ?

if your going to act like a privatized force then by all means you should just go all the way and stop taking hand out ,s from the citizens :)

for I am sure banks have enough money to pay you well

u

[lexsird]

10:07 AM on 12/11/2011

He's keeping us safe from terrorism. The terrorists hate us for our freedoms. If he takes away our freedoms, then they will not hate us anymore. If he keeps going, they will not only not hate us, they will feel sorry for us. He will probably make them cry.

Isn't he just great? I like him in orange for some reason. It suits him but for the life of me I can't put my finger on why. Dressed in orange...hmmm. Where do people all dress in orange?

[haystakt]

09:11 PM on 12/10/2011

Sorry, Bloomberg, but "This is the greatest police department in the world." just doesn't cut it. You might have some of the finest members of law enforcement, but you really should pick up on your local law enforcement's current events, it kind of makes you look like an more of an idiot than people give you credit for to neglect recent news stories on some recent NYPD drug-planting schemes to meet quotas. Oh, and what was with the extra-jurisdictional data collecting without informing local law enforcement in neighboring states? That's a systemic problem, kind of like racial profiling or allowing the CIA to co-opt your force. You have an otherwise respectable team of officers and detectives, but to say the best in the world is unobtrusively insulting.

[haystakt]

08:11 AM on 12/12/2011

Not to be unnecessarily damning, although I can apologize for the harsh tone, even while similar denial reeks from the Zuccotti Park fiasco, considering that connection to the board as the "personal army" (a moment I took to be a cry for help) protects the tax-dodging friends to thus pollute the political system, greedy fiends whose windfall crisis-windmill funded by we tax-payers, protesting theft of justice disavowing freedom of assembly to protest any of it.

But 409 is such the finest thread, a sub-parsed measure of clearly aggressive holding for dominance of the streets by those corporate bodies at risk of the people's rights speaking within legislation to claim their basic dignity back away from sophisticated data-hustle mobsters with their clear exploitation, coldly securing conditions while spoiling antidotes, to prove that being a carnivore in economic terms is as viable not, the slow and the weak consumed by the world of antiquated gambling in a sacrificial fix of the livelihoods of the unwitting, for the sheer sake and scale of idiocy of a short-term hop, destroying the track itself.

[Tom Hn]

07:35 PM on 12/10/2011

and I defend his action to protect NYC from OWS.

[lexsird]

10:08 AM on 12/11/2011

Yeah, people like that with "ideas" are dangerous. They need to keep them locked up where they belong, right?

[meowmeister]

11:24 AM on 12/11/2011

The NYPD should have locked up the Koch Brothers and the Wall Street barons who taned the economy.

[ccski410]

06:12 PM on 12/10/2011

He won't even acknowledge the reality of the whole incident....like they've been dealing with this for years and handled it just fine. He really has no clue. I just didn't realise how his type despise the rest of us who want truth, justice and liberty from those we entrusted with these important rolls. He acts like a father who says"Because I SAID so,that's why!" Has no clue how bad this is gonna get.

[Venicelady]

09:56 AM on 12/11/2011

It's what many of us that live in NYC and the boroughs have been saying for years about Herr Bloomberg.

[soldier of peace]

02:28 PM on 12/10/2011

This world is comin to a freaking end,slowly but surely we are all goin to kill each other.in the name of the almighty creator;everybody unite n put away all ur weapons n hate as well as differences and bring back love,peace,respect to prove unity!

[landskroon]

02:00 PM on 12/10/2011

Has anyone ever thought Bloomberg understood one % of Democracy ? all he knows is moneymaking and protecting the people that do the same. In a working Democracy where a free press is more important than an Army is no place for Bloomberg.

[Win30 30]

12:14 PM on 12/10/2011

Bloomberg the dictator.A monarch in his own mind.

[Tquin]

12:14 PM on 12/10/2011

You and your policemen did an excellent job on handling the so-called journalists at OWS. They should be fined very heavily for defying the law.

[Debbie Valenta]

02:49 PM on 12/10/2011

So-called? Were you there?

[OmniDude]

03:24 PM on 12/10/2011

Let them be fined after the Mayor resigns and NYPD is investigated for the way they handled the Journalists. This is a democracy not the Mayor's kingdom.

[soopershrink]

10:29 AM on 12/10/2011

Hey Mike, how did such a nice rich jewish boy get to be a nazi with his own SS troops and everything? First you ban the journalists from the scene, what comes next, you burn the protesters belongings to start a bonfire to burn their publications and books??????

[pookie01nj]

11:16 AM on 12/10/2011

Bloomberg probably wasnt even in the city, but playing golf in Bermuda. Just kept in touch on "lap top" or by phone.

[soopershrink]

11:58 AM on 12/10/2011

Also establishing some denyability if a rogue reporter happened to catch some police brutality on film, allowing him to do the "Shultz defense, I know nothing, I saw nothing"!

[Venicelady]

03:41 PM on 12/10/2011

Interesting question.

Apparently, there are people such as our Mayor, that conveniently forget their history when they achieve positions of power themselves.

[Randall Potter]

01:56 AM on 12/10/2011

The police telling journalists where they can and can't go in a public space is the definition of a police state. Journalists have covered wars and other dangerous situations. I think they know how to "stay out of the way". Bloomberg's rationale fails. How does he justify grounding new copters as well? The Constitution guarantees a free press. What part of that is open to his interpretation?

[lexsird]

10:15 AM on 12/11/2011

Where is the law enforcement that should be locking him and his toady cronies up? Seriously, the President should be ordering in Marines to guard the OWS while the Feds bring him up on civil rights violation charges. Does ANYONE remember that oath they swore to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States? Anyone?

Do we need to start sending out S.O.S's to the rest of the world? Help! Our government has lost it's mind and will crush us all, HELP! Or is it a bit late for that? Just give in and be a good little trooper, right? We will have a nice little war for you poor people to go fight here soon, just enjoy this last holiday we are letting you have before we throw you to the wolves.

America, home of the rich and their servants.