New York City is turning tables and are vowing to sue any George Floyd protestors who attack police officers. The union that represents the NYPD has decided to put an end to the violence against its officers.
What We Know:
- Paul DiGiacomo, president of the Detectives’ Endowment Association says, “If you assault a New York City Detective and there are no consequences from the criminal justice system, we have to have other means to protect our detectives. It’s heart-wrenching because they are out there doing a job under very difficult circumstances, trying to protect the innocent people that are protesting while the criminal element is within that group, assaulting, looting and victimizing not only police officers and detectives out there, but also the people of the city.”
- The Endowment Association represents 19,000 current and former detectives. DiGiacomo vows to sue any protestor, looter, or rioter who attacks any of its members.
- Detective Joseph Nicolosi filed a lawsuit against a looting suspect at a pharmacy in Manhattan. He says he was injured in a struggle with a 19-year-old who resisted arrest.
- DiGiacomo says the officers and detectives have had urine thrown on them, rocks thrown at them, they’d been shot at and assaulted. There is no word on whether the lawsuits will go through at this moment.
- According to civil rights attorney, Ron Kuby, this isn’t a new tactic by police. “This was tried back in the 1990s in New York City, at another time when there was a great deal of unrest and ultimately, it didn’t work. If the police want to use the civil law as a tool in their policing, those of us who pay their salaries have the opportunity now to engage in some real reform, which is, stop the indemnification of cops, stop the free lawyers for the police, stop the qualified immunity for the police — and we’ll see how that works out for them.”
- Kuby says officers will need to surrender the legal restrictions protecting them if they want to sue citizens. Other cities have indemnified law enforcement which generally protects them from being sued.
Qualified immunity for police has been stripped by lawmakers in Congress and some state legislatures. More than 350 of the NYPD’s officers have been assaulted during the protests.
