NYPD Banned From Excessive Force Under George Floyd Protest Agreement

NEW YORK CITY — The nation's largest police force must reform how it responds to protests as part of an historic agreement over the department's brutal response to 2020's George Floyd demonstrations.

The agreement struck Tuesday bans the NYPD from kettling protesters, intimidating crowds with helicopters and using other excessive force tactics that thousands of New Yorkers experienced firsthand during the Black Lives Matter protests.

NYPD officers will stay out of most protests and the department's much-criticized Strategic Response Group can only respond in specific situations, the agreement states.

"Too often peaceful protesters have been met with force that has harmed innocent New Yorkers simply trying to exercise their rights," said Attorney General Letitia James, in a statement. "Today's agreement will meaningfully change how the NYPD engages with and responds to public demonstrations in New York City."

The agreement settles lawsuits brought by James, The Legal Aid Society, the New York Civil Liberties Union and others over the NYPD's wrongful arrests and excessive use of force against protesters during the summer of 2020.

Mayor Eric Adams, who is a former police officer, issued a video in which he compared the reforms outlined in the agreement to the end of illegal stop-and-frisk.

The agreement sets new NYPD protocols designed to protect New Yorkers' rights during "spontaneous protests," he said.

"It will ensure that we are protecting public safety during these spontaneous demonstrations, while also respecting protesters' First Amendment rights," he said.

The mass demonstrations in New York City after the murder of George Floyd did involve looting, fires and other types of violence against police officers. But those incidents largely stopped after a few days while brutal actions by NYPD officers — from unprompted assaults, indiscriminate pepper spraying, arrests of reporters, "kettled" demonstrators on bridges and more — continued, according to videos, a slew of lawsuits, dozens of police misconduct hearings and a lengthy city Department of Investigation probe.

The agreement calls for the NYPD to create a new senior-level executive to oversee protest-related activities. It also sets a four-tiered system for how police respond to protests that focus on deescalation.

NYPD officers will only break up protests as a last resort and must give orders to disperse three times before arrests, the agreement states.

"Today’s settlement ensures the NYPD can no longer indiscriminately deploy the notorious Strategic Response Group to protest and no longer escalate force on a whim," said Molly Biklen, the deputy legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Read the agreement here.