Later, Flores got into a dispute with a heckler who, it transpired, was the same man who attended another rally on Sunday, May 31 on Third Avenue in the Bronx. As reported by Norwood News, the man in question disrupted a News 12 interview with Councilman Fernando Cabrera during the May 31 event. One of the protest organizers at the Jun. 5 event later convinced the unidentified heckler to leave the area.

 

Various speakers took turns to speak at the Jun. 5 rally, collectively addressing the crowd for almost an hour as they stood wedged into the traffic island known as Lou Gehrig Plaza outside the Bronx County Courthouse. At one point, the demonstrators apparently defied an NYPD request and moved up onto the courthouse steps.

 

While standing on the steps, one unidentified organizer yelled out, “We stand on the blood and backs of our people. These buildings are here because of them. The only reason we have capitalism is because of 400 years of free slave labor, so dismantle this (expletive) system.”

Later, on Jun. 18, New York City Council voted on a historic package of legislation aimed at addressing police misconduct and enacting substantial police reforms. Included in the package was a bill to ban chokeholds and other methods of restraint, such as kneeling on a person’s neck, by police officers while conducting an arrest.

 

Officers found guilty will be charged with a Class A misdemeanor regardless of whether there is injury. The statewide ban on chokeholds only applies in cases of a serious injury or death.

 

Two other bills in the package will enhance transparency in police interactions and allow New Yorkers to file lawsuits in response to violations. The first reaffirms the right to record police activity and the second prevents officers from shielding their badge numbers from the public.

 

Prior to the passage of the police reform legislation at State level, on Jun. 11, New York State Sheriffs’ Association and New York State Association of Chiefs of Police wrote an open letter to Governor Andrew Cuomo in which they called on the governor to stop fanning the flames of division and to stop exploiting anti-police hysteria and unwarranted political rhetoric to ram through legislation that was ill conceived, hastily crafted, and anti-police.

 

The letter went on to say that in recent days there had been more than 80 burglaries of firearms dealers, with more than a thousand firearms stolen, that explosives were finding their way into the hands of anarchists, and that violent agitators who had been hijacking peaceful demonstrations were being empowered by demagogues who refused to acknowledge that their criminal acts were wrong.

 

The signatories went on to write that for the two weeks prior to Jun. 11, law enforcement officers across the country had continued to protect peaceful protestors even when those protestors were protesting against those same police officers, and that in the course of carrying out their duties, three police officers had been killed and 800 had been wounded.

 

The signatories asked, “What other profession would expose themselves to such risks, and for such little gratitude?” adding that the officers were good men and women who deserved active support, not harmful rhetoric nor punitive legislation.

 

Meanwhile, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea announced on Monday, Jun. 15 that the department would immediately begin disbanding the anti-crime unit made up of 600 officers who patrol neighborhoods wearing civilian clothes, and unmarked police vehicles. Shea said that the officers in question would be redeployed to other units within the police department.

 

At the Jun. 5 Bronx protest, after demonstrators reached the Grand Concourse, they then headed into Manhattan for more rallies.

 

*Síle Moloney provided additional reporting to this story.