1988 Tompkins Square Park riot

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In August 1988 a riot broke out in Tompkins Square Park. The police attempted to enforce a newly-passed 1:00 a.m. curfew for the park. Instead, bystanders, artists, residents, homeless people and political activists were caught up in the police action that took place the night of August 6th. In an editorial entitled Yes, a Police Riot, The New York Times commended Commissioner Benjamin Ward and the New York Police Department for their candor in a report that made clear the NYPD were responsible for inciting a riot.[1]

File:SignTSP.jpg
A city sign in the park commemorates the riots.

The Riot

Background

St. Brigid's Church on Avenue B overlooks TSP and allowed protestors to organize there.

The East Village, and Tompkins Square Park in particular, had become a gathering place and home for the wayward and those on the verge of imminent collapse. Contingents of the homeless and rowdy youth had nearly taken over the park, but the neighborhood was divided about what should be done, if anything. The volunteer group Friends of Tompkins Square Park didn't mind the park in this state. However, the Avenue A Block Association, comprised of local businesses, insisted on a curfew to evict the squatters in the park. Manhattan Community Board 3 tried to take the middle ground, but political organizers for the poor favored protest to keep it open all night.[2] The Avenue A Block Association complained to Community Board 3. On June 28, the board's members approved a report on the park that recommended a 1 A.M. curfew. The vote was binding. Some residents complained that it was passed with little discussion and that some board members were not aware that the park would be closed. But board manager Martha Danziger said the decision was explicit for all. On July 11, police evicted all but the homeless, who they confined to the southeast corner, and then closed the park down periodically over the next two weeks. This was accomplished under the direction of Captain Gerald McNamara, the commander of the 9th Precinct.[3]

First signs of trouble

Some residents considered it an attempt to take the park away from the public. Protests were organized and a rally called for July 31st. [4]That night, police entered the park for alleged noise complaints, and by the end of the call several people and six officers were treated for injuries and four men were arrested on charges of reckless endangerment and inciting to riot.[5] Sarah Lewison, an eye witness, said the protest was over rumors of a midnight curfew at the park and another witness, John McDermott, said the police provoked the melee.[6]

Angry organizers planned another rally for August 6th.[7]

A rematch: August 6

The police were there to meet the protesters. "It's time to bring a little law and order back to the park and restore it to the legitimate members of the community," said Captain McNamara. He dismissed questions about the seemingly excessive police numbers. "We don't want to get into a situation where we under-police something like this and it turns into a fiasco."[8]

New York was in the midst of a record heat wave. Medical waste was washing ashore in a Syringe Tide and the beaches were closed. The city was on edge and tempers were running hot. In the midst of this, the park was turned into what Times reporter McFadden described as a bloody "war zone."[9]

Around 11:30, 150 or 200 (police estimates were 700) protesters came through the St. Mark's Place entrance to the park, holding banners proclaiming Gentrification is Class War.[10] By the time dawn broke the next morning, thirty-eight people, including reporters and officers, suffered injuries; nine people were arrested on riot, assault and other charges; and six complaints of police brutality were logged with the Civilian Complaint Review Board.[11]

Protestors marched around the park to protest the curfew, seen as one more imposition, like rising rents and other unwanted changes.

Police actions

Allen Ginsberg (left) with his lifelong companion, poet Peter Orlovsky. Ginsberg was an eyewitness to the riots.

Although bottles reportedly flew, it was the police who charged the crowd.[12] Despite NYPD protestations that their actions were measured, "The police panicked and were beating up bystanders who had done nothing wrong and were just observing," said poet Allen Ginsberg, a local resident and witness.[13] Captain McNamara countered, "We did everything in our power not to provoke an incident. They didn't charge the crowd until the bricks and bottles started flying." New York Times photographer Angel Franco saw the police beat a couple who emerged from a grocery store. As he tried to take photographs, an officer clubbed Franco. A New York Daily News reporter, Natalie Byfield, was also clubbed on the head. Both were wearing press identity cards. Jeff Dean Kuipers, a reporter for Downtown magazine, was clubbed after an officer told his African-American companion, Tisha Pryor, to "move along, you black nigger bitch." Kuipers said that the police "were fighting very dirty, slamming my head against the ground. I had one cop laying right on top of me. I got bruises all over and am still getting nosebleeds."[14]

Pryor is seen crying and blood flowing down the back of her neck in a videotape made by Clayton Patterson, an artist. Another video made by freelance cameraman Paul Garrin shows officers swinging clubs at him and slamming him against a wall. Mr. Fish, a travel promoter out for an evening on the town, attempted to hail a taxi on Avenue A near Sixth Street when he was suddenly struck on the head. "I was just standing there watching," he said. "The next thing that I remember is seeing the stick, and then a young woman who was helping me." Patterson's videotape showed that no officers helped Fish until an ambulance arrived. A police helicopter hovered over the scene, contributing to a sense of chaos.[15]

During a lull in the riot, a young officer on Patteron's video appealed for understanding from the protestors. He tried to calmly tell them how unhappy the police were with the assignment and is aftermath. "We've got cops back there in ambulances who've been hit."

But the lull ended. Thirty to seventy protesters re-entered the park. A witness said the group rammed a police barricade through the glass door of the Christadora House (photo at right) high-rise luxury building on Avenue B. They overturned planters and tore a lamp out of the wall. As he lay bleeding, Harris Pankin, a singer with a rock band, said he was dragged between two mounted police officers and then beaten on the head, legs and body.[16]

At 6 A.M., the last protesters dispersed, vowing to demonstrate again.[17]

When questioned about the brutality, Captain McNamara said, "It was a hot night. There was a lot of debris being thrown through the air. Obviously tempers flared. But all these allegations will be investigated."[18] Mayor Ed Koch was forced to temporarily revoke the curfew.[19]

Immediate aftermath

Eventually the brutality complaints ballooned to over 100.[20] Video and images of "police officers striking demonstrators with nightsticks and kicking other apparently defenseless people while they were lying on the ground" were flashed continuously across the media. New York Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward issued a scathing report laying the blame for the riot squarely on the precinct. The police actions were "not well planned, staffed, supervised or executed...which culminated in a riot." Ward announced the retirement of Deputy Chief Thomas J. Darcy, who was absent from the scene and derelict in his duties. [21] Deputy Inspector Joseph Wodarski, the senior officer at the scene in Darcy's absence, was not demoted but transferred from his prestigious post as commander of the Midtown South precinct to a "less sensitive" command. Captain McNamara, the lowest-ranking commander at the scene, was temporarily relieved of his post, but was allowed to resume command of the precinct the next year. Ward said that McNamara's actions were "not well planned, staffed, supervised or executed, [but he] acted in good faith and made judgments that were within the level of his experience," after Darcy and Wodarski failed to act.[22]

Christadora House, for many the first sign of East Village gentrification, and scene of the Tompkins Square Park Police Riots.

Commissioner Ward controversy

Ward himself had been the subject of controversy in the past, and the riot became a cause to reflect on the negative aspects of his record as Commissioner. After 10 people were shot in Brooklyn in 1984, nobody could find him for days.[23] He appeared drunk at a Patrolmen's Benevolent Association convention in 1984; under his watch in 1985 officers in Queens used stun guns on suspects and in 1986 Brooklyn police stole and sold drugs. He was lambasted in 1987 for telling African-American journalists that most crime in New York was committed by young black men and later told black ministers in reference to that remark, "our little secret is out." He told a woman who was scared about a series of rapes that she was the type of woman a rapist would go after.[24]

It was noted that Mayor Koch held steadfast in his support of Ward. Although Koch said he was "shocked" by the videotape of the police response, as he had done in the past he refused to utter a negative word about Ward. "The day I think that a commissioner, including a police commissioner, isn't as good as he should be to run whatever he's running, that's the day I will ask him to submit his resignation," said Koch. "I think Ben Ward will go down as one of the greatest police commissioners this city has ever had. Bob McGuire is the other, and I appointed both of them."[25]

Actions against officers

Two officers were charged with excessive force. Officer Karen Connelly was accused of using her nightstick "wrongfully and without just cause" to strike a civilian, and Philip O'Reilly, who was accused of interfering with Times photographer Franco, and of using his nightstick to injure Franco's hand.[26] The Civilian Complaint Review Board recommended the officers be charged, and Commissioner Ward endorsed the recommendations.

Neighborhood reactions

A neighborhood divided over their feelings about police were united against their aggression. "The streets were full of people who I see coming out of their houses every morning with briefcases...I mean people who work on Wall Street, and they're standing in the street screaming Kill the pigs!" said Phil Van Aver, a member of Manhattan Community Board 3.[27] Board 3 and the nonprofit social service organizations supported the goal of clearing Tompkins Square Park of the drug dealers, drunks, addicts and anti-social elements that considered it home.[28] Instead, the police riot ripped open old wounds about brutality and the neighborhood's housing problem many longtime residents faced.[29] "The police, by acting in the brutal fashion that they did, managed to link a small group of crazies to the legitimate sentiments of opposition to gentrification," said Valerio Orselli, director of the Cooper Square Committee, a nonprofit housing group. "Now the issue has become police brutality, not housing. It's set everyone back."[30]

Many people relished the neighborhood as a home for society's outcasts. Getrude Briggs, owner of East 7th Street store Books n' Things, and a resident of 41 years: "Of course [the East Village] still attracts a lot of freaks, because it's still a place you can be free. For a lot of kids, coming here is a way to get away from the choking atmosphere of suburbia."[31] Thirty year resident Barbara Shawm protested the East Village's dangerous reputation: "A 90-pound woman can easily fend off a down-and-outer or an addict. They're not dangerous. It's more dangerous uptown - what people do to each other in elevators."[32]

Roots in music

According to Times reporter Todd Purdham, the clash had its roots in music.[33] The park was a gathering place for scores of drunken rock fans and their boisterous street parties. The raucous affairs would rage through the night and they divided the community. The New York Times quoted a handbill for The Backyards, a band looking for a drummer: "Must be dedicated, hard-hitting, in it for life. Willing to die naked in an alley for your anti-art. Outcasts and social rejects preferred but not essential."[34] The anarchist rock band Missing Foundation were active in the riots and their logo—an overturned martini glass and "1988 - 1933"—was found everywhere on the walls of the East Village. The band's singer, Peter Missing, sang through a bullhorn and claimed industrial society was on the verge of collapse and that a police state was imminent. The overturned glass signified the band's slogan "the party's over," and the dates an allusion to the year the Nazis took over the Weimar Republic.[35]

Riot anniversary concerts

On November 7, 2004 about 500 people gathered in Tompkins Square Park to attend a concert by the punk band Leftover Crack. The concert has become a yearly ritual to mark the 1988 riots. According to the NYPD, when officers attempted an arrest for an open container of alcohol, concertgoers "surrounded and assaulted" the officers. Six arrests were made on charges including assault inciting to riot. "It was a confrontation obviously. I don’t know if 'riot' is the right word," said Detective Gifford, a Police Department spokesperson. Reportedly, some of the punks spit upon and jumped on officers. Beer bottles were thown, causing some in the crowd to pour beer over fellow concertgoers.[36] On August 9, 2006, Leftover Crack again played the riot anniversary concert. A fight broke out in a mosh pit.[37]

Political response

Mayor Koch called the park a "cesspool" where "sandboxes are soiled with feces and urine."[38] Koch admitted he had not seen the feces and urine himself. "There are people, hundreds of them, I'm told, who park there all 24 hours a day, and obviously there are bodily needs."[39] Hundreds of officers were called out on a steamy Saturday for the worst violence the city had seen in years, yet Koch did not know about it until the next day and said he did not speak to Ward about it until Monday.[40]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Yes, a Police Riot," editorial of The New York Times, August 26, 1988, Section A; Page 30, Column 1; Editorial Desk
  2. ^ "Melee in Tompkins Sq. Park: Violence and Its Provocation," by Todd Purdham, The New York Times, August 14, 1988, Section 1; Part 1, Page 1, Column 4; Metropolitan Desk
  3. ^ Id.
  4. ^ See above, Purdham, The New York Times, August 14, 1988
  5. ^ "Residents Clash With the Police In Village Park" by Sarah Lyall, The New York Times, August 1, 1988, Section B; Page 3, Column 6; Metropolitan Desk
  6. ^ Id.
  7. ^ See above, Purdham, The New York Times, August 14, 1988
  8. ^ Id.
  9. ^ "Park Curfew Protest Erupts Into a Battle And 38 Are Injured" by Robert McFadden, The New York Times, August 7, 1988, Section B; Page 3, Column 6; Metropolitan Desk
  10. ^ See above, Purdham, The New York Times, August 14, 1988
  11. ^ See above, McFadden, The New York Times, August 7, 1988
  12. ^ See above, Purdham, The New York Times, August 14, 1988
  13. ^ Id.
  14. ^ See above, Purdham, The New York Times, August 14, 1988
  15. ^ Id.
  16. ^ Id.
  17. ^ Id.
  18. ^ Id.
  19. ^ "Koch's Verdict: Ward Not Guilty" by Richard Levine, The New York Times, August 13, 1988, Section 1; Page 30, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk
  20. ^ "Findings on Tompkins Sq. Prompt 2 Police Supervisors to Lose Posts" by Todd S. Purdham, The New York Times, August 25, 1988, Section A; Page 1, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk
  21. ^ Id.
  22. ^ Id.
  23. ^ See above Levine, The New York Times, August 13, 1988
  24. ^ Id.
  25. ^ Id.
  26. ^ "More Officers May Be Facing Charges," by Sarah Lyall, The New York Times, August 25, 1988, Section B; Page 6, Column 1; Metropolitan Desk
  27. ^ See above, Purdham, The New York Times, August 14, 1988
  28. ^ "The Talk of the East Village; A Neighborhood of Vigorous Opinions," by Kirk Johnson, The New York Times, August 13, 1988, Section 1; Page 29, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk
  29. ^ Id.
  30. ^ Id.
  31. ^ Id.
  32. ^ Id.
  33. ^ See above, Purdham, The New York Times, August 14, 1988
  34. ^ See above, Johnson, The New York Times, August 13, 1988
  35. ^ Id.
  36. ^ The Villager, Punks clash with police, November 10-16, 2004.
  37. ^ The Villager, Leftover Crack fires up punks, August 9-15, 2006.
  38. ^ "A Playground 'Derelicts' Can't Enter," by Todd Purdham, The New York Times, August 20, 1988, Section 1; Page 31, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk
  39. ^ Id.
  40. ^ See above Levine, The New York Times, August 13, 1988
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