Police Union Head: NYPD Shouldn't Enforce Social Distancing

NEW YORK, NY — Days after video of police officers threatening people with tasers, punching them and throwing them against walls for an alleged social distancing violation, police union leaders released a statement saying the city needs to pull the NYPD off of social distancing enforcement.

Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch described the city's current approach relying on police officers to enforce social distancing measures — which require people to avoid public gatherings, maintain six feet of distance in public and wear face coverings in crowded areas — as "untenable" in a statement released Monday.

"The NYPD needs to get cops out of the social distancing enforcement business altogether. The cowards who run this city have given us nothing but vague guidelines and mixed messages, leaving the cops on the street corners to fend for ourselves. Nobody has a right to interfere with a police action. But now that the inevitable backlash has arrived, they are once again throwing us under the bus," Lynch said in a statement.

The NYPD launched an internal investigation — already resulting in modified duty for one officer — after three people were violently arrested in the East Village during an attempted enforcement of social distancing rules. Videos of the arrest prompted outrage from legal services groups such as the Legal Aid Society and strong rebukes from Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea.

"The video was very troubling, what I saw was absolutely unacceptable and obviously discipline was swift by the NYPD," de Blasio said Monday. "But I want to note that that video is more and more of a rarity."

Shea attempted to provide more "context" to the NYPD's official description of the arrest over the weekend, which stated that officers attempted to disperse a "group of people" on Avenue D near East Ninth Street and were met with resistance. The NYPD commissioner said that in moments before the video — which shows plainclothes officers who are not wearing masks approach a man sitting on a milk crate with one woman nearby — there were many more people "milling about" on the block before police officers arrived.

Shea said that he "was not happy" with what he saw on the video, but also added that "when people do not comply with the police... sometimes those things are not pretty when they're seen on video."

A taser, a small amount of marijuana and roughly 3,000 in cash were recovered from the people arrested, Shea said. The police commissioner added that "exactly was going on there is still somewhat under investigation."

On Sunday, the Legal Aid Society called on the NYPD to release the names of police officers involved in the East Village arrests and to immediately discipline officers for acting as the aggressors in the incident.

"City Hall and the NYPD need to seriously reconsider social distancing enforcement that leads to escalations involving the use of tasers and violent assaults," Tina Luongo, Attorney-in-Charge of the Criminal Defense Practice at The Legal Aid Society, said in a statement.

Read Patch's initial coverage of the arrests here.