NYPD Prepares for Potential Unrest After Presidential Election
City officers, like others across nation, are being trained in dealing with peaceful as well as violent protests
The nation’s largest police department is training its 35,000 uniformed officers on responding to protests to prepare for the possibility of widespread unrest after the U.S. presidential election and the vote on the nomination of a new Supreme Court justice.
New York Police Department officials said they began training officers in July, following weeks of mostly peaceful demonstrations around the country, including New York City. The large-scale protests came after the May 25 killing of George Floyd, a Black man, in the custody of Minneapolis police.
The NYPD hasn’t undertaken protest-policing training on this scale since at least the 1990s, said NYPD Deputy Chief Samuel Wright, who is leading the department’s current efforts. The NYPD has so far trained nearly 8,600 officers at its Police Academy in College Point, Queens, with the remainder of the force slated to receive instruction by November, he said.
“We haven’t been engaged, in a number of years, in demonstrations like this,” Deputy Chief Wright said in an interview. “We found that it was necessary to review with our officers proper techniques and rules and procedures as it relates to policing demonstrations and large crowds.”
Over the summer, police departments in cities nationwide found their tactical expertise tested by protests. The demonstrations have led to some violent clashes between police, protesters and counterprotesters, including injuries and deaths in Kenosha, Wis., and Portland, Ore.
With the Nov. 3 election a month away, police departments around the country are likely reviewing their strategies for handling protests, according to Frank Straub, director of the Center for Mass Violence Response Studies at the National Police Foundation, a nonprofit organization that seeks to improve policing.
“Within the current environment, the need to do that would be accelerated to make sure that the response to what may come is going to be reflective of the best practices and lessons that we’ve learned as a result of the protests that followed Mr. Floyd’s death in Minneapolis,” Mr. Straub said.
Michael Harrison, the commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department, said in an interview that his department has been training officers in preparation for possible protests this fall.
“We’re creating operational plans for potential deployment of officers to voting places and strategizing how we will handle multiple protests at the same time,” he said.
Commissioner Harrison said departments in other cities are undertaking similar training efforts as well. Some have incorporated de-escalation techniques including the start of dialogues with protesters, while others have begun gathering intelligence to predict where hot spots in protests may occur. The NYPD has deployed some officers on bicycles to keep up with fast-moving marches.
Some New York City elected officials and Black Lives Matter protesters have criticized the NYPD for its handling of this summer’s demonstrations, which have called for an end to police brutality and for the defunding of police departments.
Since June, NYPD officers have arrested hundreds of protesters at scores of demonstrations that were sometimes accompanied by violence, the destruction of property and looting. In some instances, officers, protesters and bystanders suffered injuries.
The NYPD’s response to the demonstrations is currently the subject of official investigations. One officer in June was arrested and charged with assault after he was seen on video shoving a protester in Brooklyn. Multiple officers are under investigation for alleged misconduct in the protests, according to police officials.
Chelsea Miller, a New York City protest organizer and co-founder of Freedom March NYC, a youth-led civil-rights organization, said in an interview that the NYPD used heavy-handed tactics this summer to deter peaceful protesters.
“At any given day, there’s a level of unpredictability when it comes to how they choose to operate and the tactics the NYPD use,” Ms. Miller said.
NYPD officials said the department supports the exercise of free speech and peaceful protest.
Keith Taylor, a former NYPD SWAT supervisor and an adjunct assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said in an interview that the presidential election and a vote on President Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to fill the seat of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg could prompt disruptive protests.
“If Trump loses, there may be some right-wing extremists that commit violence as a result of that,” he said. “The police have to keep the public safe from extremists and any segment of society. There may be violence if he wins, and there may be violence if he loses.”
Under the NYPD’s two-day protest-training program, groups of 150 to 200 officers receive 2½ hours of classroom instruction on the handling of public gatherings. The officers are taught how to assess crowds for possible safety problems and to identify potentially disruptive situations and people, Deputy Chief Wright said.
The officers receive another 4½ hours of tactical training on the academy grounds, Deputy Chief Wright said, where they engage in role-playing with cadets and other officers who portray crowds of protesters with behaviors that range from peaceful to disorderly.
The instruction complements efforts by other sectors of the NYPD, including intelligence assessments of possible protest actions and the department’s video system, which provides live feeds of public spaces, Deputy Chief Wright said.
Officers are instructed in tactics for de-escalating tension and defusing violence, he said, including methods for understanding crowd psychology and remaining calm when facing hostile crowds.
“All this training is to make the people of New York City safe and to make our officers safe, and to ensure that the First Amendment right is able to be practiced freely without disturbances,” he said.