The Brooklyn Standard

Across Manhattan and Brooklyn today, hundreds of protesters took to the streets — and in some cases took over the streets — to protest the verdict of the Sean Bell shooting case.

At six locations across the city, including Midtown, Harlem, and both sides of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Reverend Al Sharpton and the National Action Network organized a day of civil disobedience. Dozens were arrested, including Sharpton, Bell’s fiancé Nicole Paultre-Bell, and the two survivors of the 2006 shooting.

“Today people are expressing their support for justice across the country,” said Michael Hardy, an attorney for Sharpton’s National Action Network. “If they’re not going to arrest the guilty, they’ll have to arrest the innocent.”

City Hall was the main rallying point for the protests though the original plan to stop traffic going over the Brooklyn Bridge was unsuccessful. Blockades of protesters briefly disrupted traffic at the Lincoln and Holland tunnels and the Manhattan, Queensborough and Triborough bridges, according to the Daily News. But when protesters arrived at the Brooklyn Bridge just before 4 p.m. the NYPD had already cordoned off the streets.

Dozens of officers were waiting with two police buses and quickly asked the crowd to disperse. When the hundreds of protesters and spectators refused, dozens were cuffed and led onto the buses, including Sharpton and Paultre-Bell.

The protests were in response to the acquittal of three NYPD detectives in the shooting of 23-year-old Sean Bell. On the night of the incident — Bell’s wedding day 18 months ago — the plain clothes detectives fired a total of 50 shots at Bell’s car outside a Queens night club, killing an unarmed Bell and injuring two others.

There were no apparent scuffles at the City Hall rally, but emotions ran high. Angry civilians repeatedly counted to 50, pumping gun-shaped hands at police, as if firing the same number of shots. And chants of “We are all Sean Bell” and “Guilty! Reload! Guilty! Reload!” echoed off the facades around City Hall.

“That could’ve been your brother. That could’ve been your sister. That could have been you,” said Shakur DuBois, a member of the New Black Panther Party.

DuBois said he was happy with the turnout but cautioned that vigilance and education were essential to getting their message across, not just one day of action. Recently the New Black Panthers launched a film and video training program in response to the Bell shooting. DuBois said that the goal was to empower young people with skills as well as protection in case they ever found themselves in a similar situation.

By 5:30 p.m. the loaded buses left for 1 Police Plaza to process those arrested. Raymond Burke, a volunteer with the National Action Network, was on hand to keep track of all those arrested for legal purposes.

“This is how you beat this thing,” Burke said as he jogged to the police station, clipboard in hand. “You have to have the right fight and this is where it starts,” he said.

Chelsea Fraser, a student at Dyker Heights Junior High, was arrested at school, led out by police, and spent three hours handcuffed to a pole at the station while officers interrogated her. Her crime: writing the word “okay” on a school desk.

The two misdemeanor charges filed by her principal were eventually dropped but Chelsea’s experience reflects a disturbing trend of over-policing in New York City public schools according to the Student Safety Coalition, an umbrella group of several student and civil rights advocacy organizations. “The Department of Education is failing thousands of students,” said Christopher Tan of Advocates for Children, by “reflexively resorting to punitive measures.”

School Security Agents (SSAs) are the unarmed officers employed by the NYPD to diffuse conflicts, scan for weapons and generally keep order at the city’s public schools but critics argue that they do more harm than good by bringing draconian police tactics with no accountability to an educational environment. “Kids can’t learn if they’re afraid to go to school,” said Sally Lee, founder of Teachers Unite. The coalition is pressuring the City Council to create a formal investigation and complaint process, provide more oversight and transparency, and invest in alternatives to criminalization of troubled students.

Chelsea Fraser, in attendance with the Student Safety Coalition, speaking about her arrest on the steps of City Hall.

A major issue in the school safety debate was the ambiguity of the roles and responsibilities of the NYPD and the Department of Education. Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said it was “not at all clear that principals run the schools” and cited chronic difficulties with heavy-handed, ill-trained and thuggish SSAs who insist administrators have no authority over them.

This wasn’t always the case though as school security used to be solely in the hands of the Division of School Safety, a branch of the former Board of Education. In 1998, under pressure from then-mayor Rudy Giuliani, the Board voted to transfer school safety over to the NYPD. Since then the police department has assigned approximately 5000 safety agents and 200 armed officers to patrol the city’s schools.

While the Bloomberg administration and the NYPD attribute dropping classroom crime rates to the SSA program, critics have cited studies from organizations such as the National Center for Schools and Communities that show the claims are inflated at best and flat out wrong in some cases. Contrary to the city’s laudatory remarks, more than 2,700 complaints have been filed with the NYPD concerning abusive police and agents – a particularly alarming number to the NYCLU given the fact that no official process exists for students or educators to hold security agents accountable. Council Member Peter F. Vallone, Jr., chairperson for the Committee on Public Safety said “a written protocol is essential.”

Gregory Floyd, president of the Teamsters Union local 237 – the representative of the city’s School Safety Agents – expressed concern that the NYCLU hadn’t contacted the union while preparing the report critical of their performance. “Not one school safety agent was questioned,” he said. When asked why they had not consulted Local 237, Udi Ofer, director NYCLU Bill of Rights Defense Campaign did not have an answer.

Council Member Robert Jackson, chairperson of the Committee on Education said, “It is a very, very sad day for education in New York City.” Despite the volumes of reports, litany of statements and pages of testimonies concerning school safety, Jackson was appalled that no two agencies were on the same page.