Two dozen “knuckleheads” and “spoiled brats” were busted during overnight demonstrations against police brutality in Lower Manhattan, according to NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea.
The group of about 100 demonstrators stepped off around 9:30 p.m. Monday from Fulton Street near the South Street Seaport, with police sources saying they were protesting the fatal police shooting of Texas man Jonathan Price.
They then headed to Chambers and Centre streets, where two of them were busted around midnight for preventing the NYPD’s Technical Assistance Response Unit from filming their fellow protesters who were blocking the street, the sources and police said. Two males, ages 21 and 24, were arrested for obstruction and other related charges at the location, police said.
After an hour, some members of the group called it a night and headed into a nearby train station, but others continued marching north, ending up near West Broadway and Houston Street, the sources said.
The group blocked the street, scrawled graffiti, set garbage fires and broke the glass of a Bank of America on Canal Street as well as Lazaro SoHo, a men’s clothing boutique on West Broadway, according to police and sources.
The graffiti included hammer-and-sickle symbols, various anarchist signs and the words “Jonathan Price Was Here” and “BLM,” police said.
No one has been arrested in connection with the vandalism, police said.
Around 12:45 a.m., three females — ages 20, 19 and 16 — were hit with disorderly conduct summonses at West Broadway and 8th Street for refusing to disperse, police said.
About a half an hour later, another 19 people were either arrested or issued summonses for obstruction, unlawful assembly and disorderly conduct for refusing to disperse and other related offenses, police said. One man was arrested for allegedly stealing a police radio and was charged with petit larceny, according to police and sources.
In an NY1 interview Tuesday morning, Shea said officers were “out there in tough circumstances” Monday night and early Tuesday morning, “chasing knuckleheads around.”
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“Breaking windows, property damage, graffiti, lighting fires,” the top cop said. “I mean, that is the last thing that we as New Yorkers need right now. And that’s last night in New York City — 24 more arrests, you know, at a time when we have diminished resources, and we have a violent uptick with the courts and everything else going on.”
Shaun David Lucas (Hunt County Jail)
“We don’t need officers pulled away for these, sometimes I don’t know what you call them — peaceful protesters — maybe spoiled brats at this point,” he said.
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Price, described as a “pillar of the community,” was trying to break up a domestic feud between a man and a woman at a Wolfe City, Texas, gas station Saturday when he was gunned down by police.
Wolfe City police officer Shaun David Lucas was arrested and charged with murder Monday night in connection with the shooting.
