PHOTOS: Activists 'Shut Down' City Hall to Demand Defunding of NYPD

Dozens of activists were out demonstrating in City Hall Park Monday morning, just getting warmed up for a "shut down" of New York City's City Hall to demand the removal of NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton and the defunding of the NYPD. They are calling the demonstration #SHUTDOWNCITYHALLNYC.

A handful of demonstrators held up signs calling for the NYPD to fire Bratton and for justice for victims of police violence.

Millions March NYC, the network of political organizers behind the demonstration, say their immediate demands are the firing of Bratton, the defunding of the NYPD and the reallocation of that money to "invest in Black, Brown and working-class communities," and reparations for the victims' families and survivors of police violence from the NYPD budget.

Bratton is a champion of "broken windows" policing, a strategy where NYPD cracks down on smaller crimes like public urination or vandalism to supposedly prevent felony crimes. But a report released last week by NYPD’s watchdog inspector general found that "broken windows" hasn't led to a decrease in felony crimes. Instead, it has led to "a fraying of the relationship between the police and the communities they serve," the report said. The report also found that police targeted communities of color far more than white communities, another argument Millions March NYC emphasized Monday.

"Bill de Blasio could and should fire Bill Bratton today… another year and a half is too long," Millions March NYC organizer Nabil Hassein told Patch. "Broken windows policing is one of the most disgusting, racist, horrific practices even by the standards of the police."

Hassein said he plans to stay at City Hall for the foreseeable future, but he couldn't predict how long. He also said he knows their demands are ambitious.

Organizers with Millions March NYC were passing out orientation packets about the shut down Monday morning, which included information about protesters' legal rights, emergency information and the reasons behind the demonstration. Some people arrived to give food and water donations to those planning on camping out in City Hall Park for the long haul. There were a handful of legal observers from the National Lawyers Guild donning bright green baseball hats prepared to observe and record any violence between the NYPD and protesters.

City Hall Park was lined with police cars and dozens of NYPD and New York City Parks Department officers Monday morning. There was at least one NYPD bomb squad truck on the scene. A group of NYPD officers calmly looked on, some even smiling at the demonstrators as they demanded the defunding of the NYPD.

Millions March NYC described its mission in a press release Monday:

Rather than take steps to eliminate problems affecting Black, Brown, and working-class communities, New York City's elite—and the politicians that line their pockets—choose to enhance the power of the racist police, giving them free reign to prey on the city's most marginalized residents. Instead of investing in our communities, city government continues to pour money and other resources into bolstering an occupying army that relentlessly targets, harasses, brutalizes, and murders Black and Brown people with impunity—the racist, sexist, anti-queer NYPD.

The orientation packet calls for protesters not to speak to the press and instead to direct journalists to the press table with spokespeople.

"This maximizes potential to control our narrative in the media," the packet says.

"We don't want the cops. We don't need the cops," Sista Shirley, a protester with StopMassIncarceration.net standing in City Hall Park Monday morning, told Patch. "The cops still have the same mentality they did in the age of runaway slaves," she said.

All images by Sarah Kaufman/Patch